Actor sizzles in role dubbed ‘female Hamlet’
Back in March, Coal Mine Theatre announced that Diana Bentley, one of its two co-founders, was stepping down as the company’s “co-chief engineer” after 10 years.
If that means Bentley will be able to deliver more performances like the one she gives in “Hedda Gabler,” the company’s final show of the season, then all is good. In a fiercely difficult role that’s been called “the female Hamlet,” she absolutely sizzles, making us appreciate the contradictions and neuroses of Henrik Ibsen’s notorious heroine.
Fittingly, this Coal Mine production features a mostly female creative team. Liisa Repo-Martell, whose adaptation of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” was a big hit at Crow’s Theatre before getting picked up as part of the off-Mirvish season, has adapted Ibsen’s play, while Moya O’Connell, a noted Hedda herself, directs. And singersongwriter Emily Haines, of Metric and Broken Social Scene, composed the score.
It’s Haines’ score that suggests a contemporary feel from the start. In the wordless opening image, a barebacked Bentley sits at a piano and plunks out a disturbing, discordant melody. This, we get the sense, is a woman who’s not of her time. But is she, we begin to wonder, a part of any time?
Once the play proper begins, we realize that O’Connell and company haven’t strayed too far from Ibsen’s original setting of late-19thcentury Norway. Recently returned from their honeymoon, Hedda and her academic husband, Jorgen Tesman (Qasim Khan), are now ensconced in their new house, which is far more extravagant than what they can afford, at least before Jorgen receives an expected university appointment. Jorgen’s aunt Julia (Fiona Reid) has had to draw on her retirement savings to help pay for some of the furnishings. And it’s implied that family friend Judge Brack (Shawn Doyle) has pulled some strings — but at what cost?
Despite everyone’s efforts, though, Hedda is bored. She realizes she doesn’t love her husband. When she discovers that her exlover, Eilert Lovborg (Andrew Chown), is in town, and that former classmate Thea Elvsted (Leah Doz) has helped him find sobriety and inspiration for a new book, she hatches a plan to make her life more interesting, regardless of the chaos it causes.
And oh, what chaos, including lost manuscripts, drunken debauchery, casually wielded firearms and pulled hair. In a time and place where women are unable to do much besides become wives and mothers, Hedda looks to see how she can wield her power over others. Repo-Martell’s adaptation smartly points out that the play’s other women are just as restless, but act in more constructive, socially accepted ways.
O’Connell has reconfigured the Coal Mine space so the action takes place on a long, narrow, hardwoodlined strip, surrounded by audience members on three sides. At the end of Joshua Quinlan’s handsome, uncluttered set is the upright piano, with a desk and French doors that open to a back entrance. A curtain gives the semblance of privacy, even though you can see through the sheer white fabric.
All of this underscores Hedda’s exposure, which Bentley communicates with fist-clenching, room-pacing restlessness.
In the absorbing first act, Hedda interacts mostly with one character at a time and her behaviour with each person is telling.
She’s careful and calculating with Jorgen, who is her respectable meal ticket, after all. When Hedda and Brack sit together, she’s frank and bold. With Thea, she’s friendly because she wants information, but once she gets it her inner Mean Girl comes out. Hedda with Eilert is passionate and reckless.
Is Hedda one of these women or all of them?
The beauty of this production, and Bentley’s performance, is that nothing is certain. To the end, the actor keeps us guessing about her motivations.
Our last look at Hedda is thrilling, and Bentley seems to release all her character’s pent-up emotions in one primal and very physical moment.
Audiences will get to compare Heddas when the play, adapted by Patrick Marber, opens at the end of the month at the Stratford Festival. Whatever the result, it will be hard to erase Bentley’s haunting portrayal of this enigmatic woman from our minds.