Stage

Hedda Gabler.

by J. Cooper Robb

The Mauckingbird Theatre Company’s first two productions, a dazzling all-male staging of The Misanthrope and an exceptional production of R&J were about as good as regional theater gets. Unfortunately the same can’t be said about the company’s third effort, Caroline Kava’s poorly conceived adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic Hedda Gabler.

Kava’s plot basically mirrors that of Ibsen’s original with one huge exception; the notorious character Eilert Lovborg is now a woman.

The story begins with Hedda (Jennie Eisenhower) and her academic husband George Tesman (Dito van Reigersberg) returning home from their honeymoon. Hoping for a prestigious teaching position, George is devoted to his wife but at the moment economically strapped. Hedda (who we’re told “never puts up with anything but the best”) is disinterested in her husband and her meager surroundings. “The only thing I have a natural talent for is boring myself,” she says taking stock of her new position as Mrs. Tesman.

Things perk up for Hedda with the appearance of Thea Elvsted (the promising Jessica DalCanton) a young woman running from a failed marriage. Hedda takes an immediate shine to the pretty Thea, but Thea’s heart belongs to the aforementioned Lovborg (Sarah Sanford in a fierce performance), a free-thinker whose intellectual gifts are compromised by her passion for drinking and general debauchery. Hedda and Eilert have their own shared past, and it’s their relationship that’s the primary focus of Kava’s adaptation.

It’s perfectly reasonable even hopeful that an adaptation will attempt to revitalize a classic work allowing a contemporary audience a fresh perspective on the play. But Kava’s melodramatic treatment over-simplifies Ibsen’s characters and feels gimmicky.

Ibsen’s conflicted characters, who are neither wholly good or evil, are now seen in black and white terms. Where we should be torn between admiring and despising Hedda, Kava wants us to see her as a tragic hero, a lesbian trapped in a conventional marriage. Being lesbian at the turn of the 20th century surely had its challenges, but Kava’s valiant Hedda is not nearly as interesting as the complicated woman imagined by Ibsen.

Eisenhower’s exaggerated portrayal doesn’t help. Instead of the manipulative and calculating Hedda we’re used to, Eisenhower’s performance verges on emotional hysterics. Her Hedda is clearly unhappy, but we never sense the desperation of a woman imprisoned by a patriarchal society that demands conformity and denies self-expression.

Hedda Gabler is one of the most enigmatic characters in the history of theater regardless of the century we view her from. Director Peter Reynolds moves the action swiftly and Marie Anne Chiment’s costumes are gorgeous, but though Mauckingbird’s production isn’t dull, it lacks the passion and psychological complexity of Ibsen’s far superior original.

» Footlights

Art Imitating Strife Adaptations of novels for the stage are rarely successful, but you wouldn’t know it watching the Arden Theatre Company’s impressive world premiere of My Name is Asher Lev. Superbly adapted by Aaron Posner (who also directs) from Chaim Potok’s celebrated novel, Name is a passionate and poignant coming of age story about family, faith and art. The engaging one-act play follows young Asher Lev (Karl Miller) from childhood to his first major exhibition in a museum. As a six-year-old, Asher shows promise as a painter, but his strict father (Adam Heller), a devout Jew, frowns on the boy’s artistic pursuits. As he grows older Asher is tutored by an older Jewish artist who trains the young man in painting nudes and scenes of Christ’s crucifixion, a practice that further strains the relationship between father and son. Posner’s direction is wonderfully creative. In a production that is as intimate as a family dinner and as vast as a young man’s dreams, Posner employs three actors (all of whom are terrific) and few props to imaginatively move the story through time and space. Along the way Asher repeatedly tries to reconcile his devotion to art with his father’s wishes. However while his faith, family and art are initially a source conflict, as the one-act play progresses we eventually view the three as interdependent. Boasting a nerve-jangling final scene that shrewdly relies on the audience’s imagination, My Name is Asher Lev is the first must-see production of 2009. (J.C.R.)