MICHAEL MOFFATT SHOW OF THE WEEK
Is Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler a would-be feminist held back by the rigid social attitudes of 19th-century Norway, or is she an amoral, manipulative, mean-spirited, sexually frustrated basket case, interested only in money and the social high life?
She’s all of those things and more, and that’s what makes her such a gift to any actor. Her weakness? She hates society’s restraints, but is scared of facing scandal. The way she treats her former love, the brilliant but wayward Lovborg, by enticing him cruelly to kill himself ‘beautifully’, makes you wonder if she sees herself as part of a personal Greek drama.
In this dramatically powerful adapted production Mark O’Rowe speeds up the action, shortens speeches and makes the dialogue snappier. He adds a sexual boost to the former relationship between Hedda and Lovborg, and makes it clear how exactly Lovborg dies.
Peter Gaynor, in a nicely judged performance, plays Hedda’s new husband Tesman as a well-meaning but unimaginative academic, devoted to her, and gracious to all the other characters he meets.
Catherine Walker’s hugely impressive portrait of Hedda starts by being ominously contemptuous of everyone. In her destruction of Lovborg’s masterpiece she releases the full fury of Hedda’s pent-up jealousy and frustrations.
Her final scene with the preda- tory blackmailer Judge Brack (a slimily urbane Declan Conlon) is chilling in its understated intensity. But in a way, the underrated Thea Elvsted (Kate Stanley Brennan) is the real hero of the story. She has reformed and inspired Lovborg while all Hedda’s machinations have misfired.