Theatre
Hedda Gabler
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Neil Cooper
****
A WOMAN in a dressing gown sits at an incongruous looking piano, bashing out a discordant melody in an empty grey room. The opening image in Ivo van Hove's touring revival of Henrik Ibsen's 1891 dissection of domestic power is either the glistening epitome of Zen minimalist chic or else just, well, empty. A maid sits to one side awaiting instructions, while the floor is loaded with house-warming flowers. Nothing has found its place yet, least of all Hedda, who is trapped in a room most definitely not of her own.
As played by Lizzy Watts, and surrounded by men in suits who only want to mansplain, objectify, control and abuse her, Hedda is barely able to suppress the urge to take charge of both herself and everybody else. All of which is inadvertently close to the bone right now in Van Hove's National Theatre production. Aided by Patrick Marber's lean new version of the play and Jan Versweyveld's ice-cool design, this contemporary reimagining more resembles a piece of Scandic noir than Ibsen's 19th century original.
As Hedda's husband, Tesman, tortured writer Lovborg and Adam Best's predatory Judge Brack go on an all-night bender in a brothel, Hedda has a girly night-in with the maid and Mrs Elvsted, played by Annabel Bates as a wet blanket of hopelessly devoted conformity. Hedda lashes out, even as she hides away from the light, which eventually sees the windows symbolically boarded up.
In her attempts to create her own space and reclaim her own power, she looks set for a lifetime of disappointment. In the end, her final act of defiance may see her take control of her own destiny, but even with such an extreme psycho-sexual explosion, no-one is saved.
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