JOYCE MCMILLAN
There’s nothing quite like the thrill of seeing a great contemporary director seize one of the mighty classics of theatre by the throat, and whirl it straight into our own century, with no loss of power.
That’s exactly what happens in Ivo van Hove’s searingly brilliant National Theatre reimagining of Ibsen’s 1891 masterpiece set by designer Jan Versweyveld in a huge, light-drenched grey box of a luxury apartment, the brand-new home of the play’s tormented heroine Hedda – a privileged general’s daughter – and her devoted new husband, an academic called Tesman.
It’s not that there are no caveats, as van Hove plunges Hedda into a 21st century world where, objectively speaking, women have far more freedom. Right from the opening scene – as Lizzy Watts’ Hedda, back to the audience, picks out doleful piano notes – this production strips away the naturalistic clutter that would make the play into mere social observation, and focusses hard on the truth.
Hedda’s constraints are almost all internal rather than external, from her terror of conventional life and love, to the furious, frustrated envy of the real creative power of others that compels her to destroy the work and happiness of her former admirer Lovborg.
It can be disconcerting, at times – as this rake-thin Hedda roams the stage in a silk slip, wisecracking cruelly at everyone within range – to see Ibsen’s tragic heroine played so ruthlessly for bitter, nihilistic laughs; it makes it too easy, for some, to ignore her pain.
Yet the slight edge of Heddaas-fleabag that haunts this production signals an aspect of its sheer power; as it relentlessly connects Hedda’s terrifying destructiveness to the dysfunctional end-game of today’s privileged class, and to
Hedda Gabler,
the sheer self-harming pain of some of its daughters, trapped at the heart of a system beyond repair.
The battle between life force and death wish is also at the heart of Mark Lockyer’s solo show
in Edinburgh and Glasgow as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
In the 1990s, Lockyer was a successful young actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company when his mental health began to collapse in a haze of drink, dope, and delusional fantasies, eventually diagnosed as a form of bipolar disorder.
If the style in which he tells his 75-minute tale of a modern journey to hell and back is invincibly actorly, that’s perhaps because Lockyer was, and is still, one of the finest English actors of his generation – one who had so much to lose when he became ill, and so much to regain, once he found the help he needed, and the strength to fight back.
For Lockyer, during his illness, religion was more of a hindrance than a help, as he found himself haunted by a Mephistopheles-like devilfigure.
Society still sometimes feels a need for secular preachers, though; and in Warner Brown’s lightweight playwith-songs
three troubled souls from different generations 60-something Paul, 40-something Alison, and teenager Kat – all find themselves seeking solace outside what was once
On,
Living With The Lights
Man,
Son Of A Preacher
a Soho record shop called Preacher Man, run by a man who made it a 1960s haven for Kat’s gran, Alison’s mum, and Paul himself, then a shy gay teenager.
The show presents itself as a Dusty Springfield tribute; and Craig Revel Horwood’s production certainly has a formidable playlist of her hits, delivered instruments-in-hand in a strangely diffuse choral style by a hard-working cast of 14.
In truth, though, any string of Sixties hits would do as a peg on which to hang this kindly but unconvincing yarn, in which these three lonely souls find romance, of sorts, with the help of the son of the Preacher Man, beguilingly played by Ian Reddington. By the time they line up for a closing chorus of You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, it’s beginning to seem just as well that they don’t; given the improbability of the plot-twists needed, to bring them to their final happy ending.
Hedda Gabler at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, final performances today; then at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 21-25 November, and the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15-20 January. Living With The Lights On at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, tonight, 21 October. Son Of A Preacher Man at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, final performances today; and at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, and His Majesty’s, Aberdeen, May and June 2018.