By Peter Maddern
Hedda Gabler is a piece of work. A woman, named not as her husband’s wife but as her father’s daughter, exists in a world where her overarching desire for power over others pollutes the well of accepted behaviour expected by those around her. When Ibsen wrote the play, the character of Hedda was somewhat of a sensation given the straight laced preferences of the theatre of that time. Today, with Joanna Murray-Smith’s modern adaptation, she is probably a far more recognisable or familiar figure. But while strong, she is no pin-up girl for the feminist movement – there being no yang to her evil yin.
State Theatre’s modern adaptation via Murray-Smith is slick. Alison Bell successfully takes on one of the most demanding roles in theatre, seemingly preferring to paint her Hedda as a manipulating villain rather than say a victim of circumstance or an idealist fighting against society.
Hedda achieves her power and status not through beauty but a charisma that men find compelling, mostly to their detriment. Cameron Goodall, as her husband Jorgan, does nicely as the somewhat weak man who has fallen under her spell but who nonetheless also balances his career needs with respect for the struggles of a colleague rather better than his wife does. However, his seeming ambivalence to the potential joys of his honeymoon seems to not have made him rather more sceptical of his wife’s personality.
Terence Crawford as Judge Brack, their confidant and business manager, is the only one who seems to be able to match Hedda, with Crawford convincingly placing himself as Hedda’s equal in the game of free wills and manipulation.
Whether the modern adaptation works is questionable. While DJ Trip’s haunting electronic vibes instantly atune our minds to the present day, the combination of i-pods and mobile phones with hand written manuscripts seems somewhat awkward. Perhaps pitching this in the 1980s would have been sufficient.
Kryztoff Rating 3.5K
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