Phillyist Reviews... Hedda Gabler

Another new writer joins us today: Daniel Wallace. Daniel is British. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

On Saturday, Phillyist watched Mauckingbird Theatre Company's production of Hedda Gabler. The unusual thing about Caroline Kava's new interpretation of Ibsen's play is that Ejlert Lovborg (Hedda's old love interest and new intellectual rival to her husband) is now a female character, played by the excellent Sarah Sanford, who writes and cross-dresses her way into male society. The male characters accept her as more or less one of their own; Hedda's old school friend, Thea Elvsted, has left her husband for Lovborg, and Hedda herself has conflicted feelings about her old mentor and flame.

Perhaps surprisingly, this change didn't damage the coherence of the original at all; indeed, it gave the sexual rules of the time fresh bite. In the standard version of the play, it might have been hard for a contemporary audience to take too seriously the roundabout ways that Hedda discusses Lovborg with the smitten Thea: "You were two good comrades, in fact?" It was, in other words, the perfect way to achieve that tricky thing, "relevance": it seemed quite believable that the male characters Tessman (Hedda's husband) and Judge Brack would accept this one peculiar woman into their world; it made Lovborg's fragile sense of self-worth more poignant, as she knew that one lapse into drink would ruin her guest status in male society, and certain lines in the play seemed to have almost been waiting for this interpretation, such as when Hedda takes the terrified Thea in her arms and says, "I think I must burn your hair off after all."

On the other hand, Phillyist felt that the change was not without its cost. By making Lovborg female, all the parts of the play not centered around Hedda Gabler became more interesting: the men seemed more sympathetic for accepting Lovborg; Thea becomes more heroic for loving her. Which made Hedda's character more obscure. While we liked Jennie Eisenhower's performance, there seemed to be too much going on in the play to work out what the title character's role was meant to be. Now that Hedda has sexual feelings for all the main characters (she flirts with Judge Brack, is most likely pregnant from Tesman, seemed ready to eat Thea alive, and denies her feelings for Lovborg) it became harder for this member of the audience to get what was going on in the character's head, and the late speeches about beauty and purity seemed to come out of nowhere. Adding a lesbian element made all the other parts of the play less dull—but perhaps Ibsen meant them to be dull, in order to keep his anti-heroine in the spotlight.

Perhaps some of this dispersal of the play's energies also came from the excellent performance by Sarah Sanford as Lovborg. Whether uptight and straight-laced in front of Tesman, or wry and seductive alone with Hedda, or hung over and disgraced by the end, Sanford the actress seemed to disappear, leaving only her suffering character on display to the audience. And the play was well suited to the Adrienne Theatre's small Second Stage, where the audience is close enough to Hedda's drawing room to feel one more of the house's many visitors.

Jennie Eisenhower and Sarah Sanford appear in Mauckingbird Theatre Company's production of Hedda Gabler, at the Second Stage at the Adrienne Theatre through January 29. Photo by Jill McCorkel.