Hedda Gabler

 

Jericho Arts Centre to April 16, 2023
Tickets from $26 (students, $15 with ID) at www.unitedplayers.com or 604-224-8007

Posted March 27, 2023

Years ago, I vowed never to dip into the morass that is literary criticism ever again. It’s enough to drive you as mad as Hedda Gabler. But this United Players’ production of Ibsen’s iconic 1890 play, directed by the superb Canadian actor Moya O’Connell and translated/adapted by the eminent Ibsen scholar Dr. Errol Durbach, sent me back into that quagmire. What are we to make of this production leaning so heavily, as it does, on melodrama?

Melodrama: from Greek ‘melos’ meaning ‘melody’ and French ‘drame’ meaning ‘drama’. Music we have aplenty in this production thanks to composer/sound designer Torquil Campbell  and the music serves the play beautifully. A grand piano on stage is played periodically and, at one point, Hayley Sullivan (as Hedda) plays one note over and over and over and again. But melodrama has come to mean a work marked by the exaggerated emotions of the characters and the importance of action and plot (from Merriam-Webster); it has largely fallen out of favour except where it’s still alive and well and living on the small screen.

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen has often been called “The Father of Modern Drama” by which it is meant that he wrote about ordinary people in a realistic style. The big question, it seems to me, is whether or not he successfully broke away from melodrama – popular as a diversion in the late 19^th century when he was writing. His supporters say ‘aye’; his detractors say ‘nay.’

This production is a mixed bag of realism and melodrama. Realistic are Auntie Julie (Nicky Anderton), Berthe (Penny Handford), Judge Brack (Nick Rempel) and Thea Elvsted (Lola Claire). The set design by Emily Dotson is realistic as are Julie White’s fabulous gowns on Hedda and Thea. The burgundy taffeta gown with the brass-coloured trim across the bodice is absolutely perfect in its suggestion of a military uniform.

But almost farcical is Hedda’s husband Jorgen Tesman (Ayush Chhabra) who ends so many of his sentences with “ja?” similar to our “eh?” and is simply a mess of nervous, handwringing energy, bordering on downright buffoonery. Ejlert Lovborg (Victor Ayala) in his dissolute state is a staggering , self-pitying drunk, completely unworthy of fulfilling or even understanding Hedda’s desire to see him end his life “with vine leaves in his hair.” In Tesman, we have come to expect not a clown but a mediocre scholar, a boring conservative; and in Ejlert we want a smoldering, sexy intellectual who, unfortunately, just can’t hold his liquor.

But I like what Sullivan does with Hedda. She’s realistic, mannish, striding across the stage, shoulders set. Sullivan’s body language is perfect. Hedda’s nasty but there’s no doubt in my mind that Sullivan’s Hedda is justifiably going mad with boredom, with the hopelessness of her situation: pregnant, bound to that clownish Tesman and now under the thumb of lecherous Judge Brack who holds her future in his hands; he has truly become the cock of the walk. Of course, what Hedda does in the end is without argument: it’s melodrama pure and simple – “People don’t do that sort of thing” –  but what other avenues are available to her? Not law. Or business. Or war for which she is supremely suited, being the only child of General Gabler whose framed image overlooks the stage.

Brian Johnston, writing for the Pennsylvania State University Press, says it’s obvious Ibsen wrote melodrama but with intention which makes it okay. For instruction? Those who let their lives run to histrionics end up in a bad way? Is that what Ibsen, known as a moralist, was getting at? We can only guess, translation being a tricky thing across barriers of language, geography and time.

What I do know is that all the Hedda Gablers I have seen have played down the supersized dramatics, exercised restraint and played for subtlety. And I have like all of them. Several come to mind: one at Roedde House, directed by Bob Frazer and starring Anna Cummer; another directed by Norman Armour with a little ghostly girl running/skipping around the perimeter of the stage: Hedda as a child. And yet another starring Tamsin Kelsey at the Vancouver Playhouse. Each time I came away seeing something new and different in Hedda and thinking, “Oh, that’s who she is.”

And that, finally, is the hallmark of a great play: that across all time and boundaries, a character remains enigmatic, potent, fascinating, elusive. This production will leave you asking what was Ibsen thinking when he wrote Hedda Gabler. As Dr. Durbach writes in the program notes, “Audiences should not be distressed at their inability to determine whether Hedda is a hero or a villain: she is both – in play that that George Steiner calls a good example of “meaningful undecidability.”