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HEDDA GABLER - New York Theatre Works
by Henrik Ibsen, translation by Christopher Hampton, Directed by Ivo van Hove
Production Design – Jan Versweyveld, Costumes – Kevin Guyer
With Elizabeth Marvel as Hedda Gabler, Elzbieta Czyzewska as Berte, Glenn Fitzgerald as
Eilert, Jason Butler Harner as George, Mary Beth Peil as Aunt Julia, Ana Reeder (Small
Tragedy, Sight Unseen) as Mrs. Elvsted and John Douglas Thompson as Judge Brack
The set for this production makes people stop in the doorway to the theatre and ask, “Is the theatre
being renovated, or is this the set?” It’s the set. The interior of the theatre has been stripped and
replaced it with unfinished drywall that extends over all four walls. It is such a radical change, and
makes the theatre so cavernous, that I thought they had added rows of seats. They haven’t. It’s a
cold set. The sound and light bounce off it, and create an unsettling physical atmosphere for this
production. van Howe doesn’t want us comfortable for one second. Bully for him. About 20
minutes into this production I began to feel like I was witnessing a group interrogation in a cold
gym in some remote location. I couldn’t leave so I just went numb.
This Hedda is onstage as we enter the theatre, sitting at an upright piano with her back to us,
playing a series of notes over and over and over again. She is dressed in a short red sating
nightgown/slip and a long brown sweater. She caresses one of her guns, rubbing it up and down
her temple. She is surrounded by buckets of wilted flowers and three or four pieces of furniture
that, like Hedda, has seen better days.
As a matter of fact everyone in this play seems to have seen better days. Not that they are happy
about them. Life for these characters is one big saucer of spoiled milk, and they are busy lapping
it up and noising off about it as fast as they can.
The characters each arrived fully formed, locked and loaded. Berte began by screaming a few
lines so loud they are unintelligible (all the other characters do this as well, and at the oddest
moments), then spends the rest of the play sulking and smoking in a corner; Tesman tossed off
lines like an adolescent whose Instant Messenger wasn’t working; Aunt Tesman strode and fretted
and strode and fretted and strode some more; Mrs. Elvsted (in the highest spike heels I have ever
seen) failed to combine a sense of innocence with passion and came across all bland and oozing;
Judge Brack was a physically masochistic manipulator who, in the last scene poured and spit
tomato juice on Hedda before shoving her face into it’s puddle on the floor; Lovborg brooded and
bellowed and banged his head on the floor; and Hedda caged herself inside an ugly unending
trance.
There was no connection between any of these characters – which is of course the point of the
story. But we never experienced them trying to connect. We didn’t see the possibility of what
might happen if they did connect. So we were deprived of the loss. We were deprived of the
emotion. We were deprived of a reason for being there.
This production made my face hurt.