A play that shocked audiences in 1890 still reverberates with passion and drips with bitterness.
By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN
Published February 6, 2004
Among women in literature, Henry Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is surely one of the least likable. She's cold, manipulative, cunning, cruel and destructive.
Yet, her very viciousness makes her as fascinating as a burning building or a car wreck. Just as the viewer thinks Hedda can't be any worse, she does something to show that she is. Her maliciousness isn't the least bit inadvertent; it's calculated and on purpose and very self-serving.
"If she were living now, she would probably be an attorney," said Melinda Green, who plays Hedda in the Avenue Players upcoming production of the classic at Leepa-Rattner Museum.
"Back then (1890, when the play was written), she didn't have any options" regarding family or career, Green said. Women were expected to stay home, have children and be supportive of their husbands.
"I think it's a conflict that still goes on even 100-plus years later," Green said.
Ibsen's play was a shocker in its day. Until then, European and American stages were filled with either classics about royalty or romantic plays and comedies.
It took a clear-eyed Norwegian to create unsentimental, middle-class characters who reflect ugly reality: women trapped in loveless, aimless marriages (A Doll's House), destructive men (An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck) destroying innocents, charming rogues (Peer Gynt) and, of course, Hedda Gabler.
"Hedda is probably the most challenging role I've ever faced," said Green, who once played the tormented Nora Torvald, another Ibsen woman in an unsatisfying marriage, in A Doll's House. Green stepped into the role of Hedda late in rehearsals when the woman originally cast in the role had to drop out.
"It's a lot of dialogue," Green said.
That's just the start. Hedda must show a wide range of emotions in quick order, changing from supposed loving bride to wicked temptress to a fawning friend - all of them dripping with insincerity that others in the drama don't seem to see.
As the play opens, Hedda and her husband, the scholar George Tesman (Michael Jurgensen) are returning from their honeymoon to a house that is way above Tesman's means. Tesman is smart when it comes to books, but totally clueless when it comes to realizing what a handful of woman he has married.
Tesman is awed that he landed such a prize and will do anything to please her, including letting his elderly Aunts Juliana (April Carter) and Rena (offstage character) mortgage their entire incomes to buy Hedda the house Tesman thinks she wants. In truth, Hedda cares nothing for the house nor her husband. She goes out of her way to poke fun at Tesman's loving, well-meaning aunt.
A longtime acquaintance, Thea Elvsted (Alisha Cornacchia), arrives at Hedda's door in distress, having just left her indifferent husband to chase after the recovering alcoholic writer, Eilert Lovborg (Ira Wolf). Hedda knows Lovborg; in fact, he had once pursued her. She has no interest in him now, but sees a way to amuse herself by betraying Thea and playing on Lovborg's affection for her and weakness for strong drink.
Along the way, she mildly flirts with the powerful and lecherous Judge Einar Brack (Douglas Ronk), whose raw lust for control equals her own. The difference is that Brack is a man, and men can achieve that power in ways that women cannot.
Hedda turns to an equalizer, which in 1890 could only mean a gun. She toys with her father's guns the way men toy with her, both to tragic ends.
"Ibsen has drawn us into the life of a powerful and seductive woman," said Diana Forgione, director and costumer of the play. "(She) thinks nothing of ruining lives, even causing deaths."
The Norwegian set was designed and built by Frank Lakus.
At a glance
WHAT: Hedda Gabler
WHERE: Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, 600 Klosterman Road, Tarpon Springs
WHEN: Thursday and Feb. 13-15 and 19-22. Performances are at 7 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
TICKETS: Adults, $8; students and museum members, $5. Call (727) 712-5762.
