Hedda Gabler At The Stratford Festival
Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler from 1891 is one of the masterpieces of early modern theatre. It was quite shocking back then. In the production now playing at the Stratford Festival’s Tom Patterson Theatre it is more puzzling than anything else.
The title role is sought after by most serious actresses for its emotional demands (the role is often compared to Hamlet), which may explain why the Festival was able to lure the superb Sara Topham back to the fold to take it on.
Hedda Gabler concerns itself with the struggles of its heroine to come to grips with her place in a patriarchal society that seems to have no place at all for her save as an ornament or conquest or object.
Hedda Gabler was yearning for “agency” more than a century before the word gained currency in the theatre world.
Anomie has led her into a loveless marriage with the pedantic George Tesman (Gordon S. Miller), an aspiring professor with a newly minted doctorate. Into this milieu comes her old flame, Lovborg (Brad Hodder), a recovered alcoholic with a just published, and highly acclaimed, book.
An old family acquaintance, Judge Brack (a wonderfully oily Tom McCamus) has long had his lascivious eye on Hedda (as who wouldn’t). He drops by to let Tesman know that Lovborg’s new-found prominence makes him a rival for the professorship Tesman thought was his.
Even worse, Hedda’s old (but younger) school mate Mrs. Elvstead (Joella Crichton), having abandoned her husband, is revealed to be not only Lovborg’s lover but the co-author of his as yet unpublished “masterpiece.”
In Ibsen’s original text, Hedda Gabler longs “for once in my life to have power to mould a human destiny.” Her various attempts to seize this kind of agency (there’s that word again!) come to naught, often disastrously so. In the end she is, to quote Dorothy Parker, “trapped like a rat in a trap.”
The Festival is presenting not Ibsen’s original but an adaptation by Patrick Marber, best known for the scabrous 1997 play, Closer. This Hedda Gabler was apparently created at the behest of Ivo van Hove, the avant-garde Belgian director known for his radically minimalist stagings of modern classics.
Marber has cut Ibsen’s text to the bone (this Hedda Gabler is considerably shorter than the one Ibsen wrote) and in the process has stripped it of any subtlety. Nor does the audience have the luxury of getting to know the characters enough to form any attachment to them. They remain cardboard cutouts, salvaged only by the exertions of fine actors in the main roles.
To give the adaptation its due, it does make crystal clear the abortive struggles that lead Hedda to her sad end. Molly Atkinson, perhaps taking the hint from Marber, has directed with a heavy hand. She is aided in this by lighting designer Kaileigh Krysztoflak, who creates some nice effects. Composer and sound designer Mishelle Cuttler, provides interstitial piano pieces that are suitably dramatic and kinda fun.
There’s not much to Lorenzo Savoini’s set, save for a chaise lounge and a massive fireplace. That kind of minimalism is what the script seems to call for and the fireplace is put to dramatic use.
Savoini also designed the costumes and he has created beautiful dresses and nightgowns for Hedda and Topham carries them with elegant authority.
What makes this Hedda Gabler well worth seeing are the central performances, which remain true to Marber’s and Atkinson’s vision, while giving hints of what a more, dare I say, “traditional” approach might have provided.
Topham is one of Canada’s finest actors and her gifts are on full display. She carries Hedda’s existential despair with an icy fierceness betrayed only by the occasional tear that wells in her eyes. I hope the Festival finds roles suitable for her in seasons to come.
Miller and Hodder do extremely well as the men in Hedda’s disordered life and McCamus is especially delicious as the Machiavellian Judge Brack.
This seems to be one of those productions that people either love or hate; I can’t recall hearing any neutral opinions. That’s just one of the things that makes theatergoing so fascinating a gamble.
Hedda Gabler continues at the Tom Patterson Theatre through September 28, 2024. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Stratford Festival website.
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