Review: Hedda Gabler

This Revival of the Classic Misfires

By Lauren Yarger
It’s supposed to be Hedda who is consumed with boredom and a lack of viable options, not the actress playing her, the rest of the cast and the audience. Unfortunately, these are the results in the latest revival of Roundabout Theatre Company’s Hedda Gabler at the American Airlines Theater.

Director Ian Rickson fails to find the spark to ignite considerable talent, including Mary-Louise Parker as Hedda and Michael Cerveris as her boring and ineffectual professor husband, Jorgen Tesman, and as a consequence, this modern adaptation by Christopher Shinn misfires instead of offering a lock, stock and barrel rendition of the Henrik Ibsen classic.

Parker tries to give some life to Hedda, bored with her new husband, who finds some excitement through the pistol collection left to her by her father, the great General Gabler, and by manipulating Tesman and the other people in their lives.

First, Hedda is rude to aunt Juliane (Helen Carey) who raised Tesman and who’s not quite ready to let him go. Then she seduces Tesman’s academic rival Ejlert Lovborg (Paul Sparks) who has written a masterpiece manuscript with the help of Thea Elvsted (Ana Reeder), the old schoolmate Hedda enjoys intimidating. Even Judge Brack (Peter Stormare), who handles Tesman’s meager finances which are hardly able to support the lifestyle desired by aristocratic Hedda, falls vulnerable to her charms. When her schemes fail to bring the results Hedda desires, tragedy ensues.

Parker is at her best when delivering lines of sarcastic humor and enhances them with body language and facial expressions. Most of the time, however, it appears that she’s trying hard to engage with the other actors who seem insulated from her.

Cerveris is believable as the ennui-inducing Tesman who spent his time missing his favorite slippers and pursuing academic research while on his honeymoon with the beautiful Hedda. Sparks, Stormare, Carey and Lois Markle, who plays the maid, all are equal to their parts, but there’s no chemistry or levels of interaction between any of them. Reeder, however, is miscast and consistently delivers emotionally charged lines flatly, as though she’s not quite sure what to do with them.

Hildegard Bechtler’s set design adequately conveys the dismal and confining environment in which the characters find themselves, but also, alas, is symbolic of this production.

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