A re-imaging of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
Adapted and Directed by Matthew Dunster
The Ustinov Studio
Bath Theatre Royal
Thursday 21st August 14.30
CAST
Lily Allen – Hedda
Brendan Coyle – Brack, MP and rich
Tom Austen – Jasper, Hedda’s ex lover
Julia Chan – Taya, Hedda’s friend
Ciarán Owens – George, Hedda’s husband
Imogen Stubbs – Aunt Julia, George’s aunt
Najia Ferreira – Danni, housekeeper
You get used to the Ustinov Studio at Bath having major stars in a tiny space. The productions generally go on to better things, and I hope this will join last year’s The Deep Blue Sea (Tamsin Grieg, Oliver Chris) and A View From The Bridge (Dominic West) in major West End runs. They’re not afraid of the big plays. We saw Hedda right near the end of its Bath run, sold out of course, and I can’t understand the less enthusiastic of the press reviews. Maybe they like their Ibsen as the Full Norwegian. Maybe it tightened up after the early reviews.
Matthew Dunster wrote and directed. He has a stellar career history; directing at the Globe, RSC, Chichester and Bridge Theatres. He is Martin McDonagh’s director of choice. Hangmen, The Pillowman. He has done iconoclastic things like A Very Very Very Dark Matter by McDonagh at The Bridge. Then at the Globe he did Imogen (Or Cymbeline Renamed and Reclaimed) which might just have been the final nail in the Emma Rice regime, when the theatre was covered in plastic sheeting with recorded music instead of live. It was an astonishing and powerful production, which would have been highly acclaimed anywhere but in the sacrosanct fabric of The Globe. At The Globe, he had previously done Much Ado About Nothing set in the Mexican Revolution, one of the most vibrantly colourful plays we have seen.
So … I wouldn’t have expected Norwegians in long dresses and country tweeds. Ibsen can take playing with, as in Hedda Tesman at Chichester in 2019 and set in 2019:
Cordelia Lynn has taken the character from Hedda Gabbler (1891), the stifled, bored young wife, and re-imagined her as a woman in her 50s, married to George, an academic for 30 years. Her rival, Thea, is now her daughter.
Dunster has changed it to now, and Hedda is the daughter of a deceased record label boss. Brack is not a middle-aged judge, but the wealthy local MP. MPs can manipulate better now than judges could in the past. The role of Hedda is often seen as a career peak for female actors, and is played by Lilly Allen, who looks the part of a rich record business daughter, catwalk thin, hard as nails.
The set is her ground floor luxury apartment, newly bought for her with contributions from new husband George, his doting Aunt Julia, with the money topped up by Brack, who has had designs on her (with past success). It’s in Frome, which I suspect is a Bath / Frome in joke. Frome, just a few miles away, is known as ‘the poor person’s Bath.’ It’s the sort of reference easily shifted in later productions.
It opens with Aunt Julia and Danni, the old nanny to George, now a housekeeper, discussing the couple’s return from a five month honeymoon. The flat has been filled with lilies to welcome them home (Lilies? Lily Allen? Geddit?) George has been awarded his Ph.D for research on medieval Brabant, and is hoping to be appointed professor. I think they mean the British sense of head of department here.
On return from their honeymoon, George has a pair of 19th century revolvers. Illegal, unless de-activated. Hedda is bored after five months listening to George talking on history, and no longer excited by the apartment. She wants rid of the lilies because of the heavy smell (she has a point). My mum would not allow lilies in our house. Funeral flowers. They signal death. It’s a common belief.
Taya arrives with news that Japer, who is Hedda’s ex-lover (Taya doesn’t know that) has left her and is in the area, and she is desperate to contact him. They are both recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, who have worked together to heal. Taya left her husband, Tobias, for Jasper. The innocent George will text him, as Jasper doesn’t answer Taya’s texts. They were colleagues as postgrad students.
Brack is the local MP and they say they voted for him. He runs stuff. A property magnate too.
Jasper has written a book Explosions, which is a major success. It’s on events, artistic events, that reshaped culture. It seems that now he is in competition with George for that professorship, and Brack is on the Board of Governors who will make the appointment. I sense a directorial in-joke here. Dominic Dromgoole was Artistic Director at The Globe before Emma Rice. His 2022 book is Astonish Me! First Nights That Changed the World, and like Jasper he takes the events back to Thespis in ancient Athens.
Jasper is working on a new, nearly finished book taking his theories into the future. He turns up, Hedda and Jasper go back to their relationship which was violent and self-destructive. They used to hold each other by the throat. She once put a shotgun at his chest. They re-enact that with one of George’s pistols.
A spiteful Hedda gets him to drink Campari. Recovering alcoholics can’t do that. Brack, George and Jasper go out for a night drinking. End of act one.
In act two, Taya and Hedda are asleep on the sofa. It’s morning and the men haven’t returned. George comes home. George has read part of Jasper’s new book. It is world shattering, and totally brilliant. They ended up at a female drug dealer’s house with naked women. Jasper got carried away. He left his laptop with the new and brilliant book on it, but fortunately George went back and retrieved it. George has to rush off, as his Aunt Anna, Julia’s sister, is dying. He leaves the laptop so Jasper can get it.
Poor Danni, the housekeeper, hasn’t been paid. She was employed by Aunt Julia, but has now been handed over to George and Julia. George assures her she will be paid. We see Hedda’s face. We know she won’t see the money.
Brack arrives. As an MP, he had to make his excuses and leave the party at the crack house. Hedda conceals the laptop.
When Jasper arrives, she doesn’t tell him, but when he leaves, with one of the 19th century pistols, she destroys the laptop.
An aside here. A distraught Taya arrives. She had helped with the book, co-written it, she says. It is their ‘baby’, her and Jasper. She thinks he has thrown it in the river. Hedda says nothing. As every author knows there is a great big logical issue here. If you work in Microsoft Word, the current subscription basis gives you free Cloud backup. Thus I have my current work in the Microsoft back up, which means it is accessible from both my iPad and my iPhone. But, belt and braces, I subscribe to iCloud too because I want to back up pictures and other programs, so another copy is held by Apple. If I go away abroad, I put another copy of current work on DVD-R and take it with me. They try to fix the issue by saying they didn’t back-up to the Cloud because they didn’t want Tobias (who is Taya’s brutal husband) to find their texts. No, it doesn’t work like that. You select what you want to back up.
Brack arrives with news that Jasper went back to the dealer’s house and accidentally shot himself ‘in the chest.’ He then later reveals the truth. Hedda follows Hedda Gabler in the shot that killed Jasper was in the stomach (bowels here). Hedda Tesman changed it to penis and testicles which is stronger. I guess that would be infringing on that play.
Brack now has power over her because he knows she gave Jasper the gun. He can and will use that power. We knew the ending and it was telegraphed, and it’s Ibsen, you’re waiting for a bang, but even so we came out literally shaking. It is hard hitting full-on tragedy, with the ironic last lines of the put-upon servant, Danni, cradling Hedda in her arms and saying, Poor girl. Poor girl.
Where it differs from the Ibsen is that in Act Two, Hedda is so evil and manipulative that you hate her.
MUSIC
The set has a record player on a table. It is mounted directly on top of an amplifier that is smaller in dimensions, with a wire down to a cheap speaker. As I also have a music and record collecting site, Around and Around, I have to point out that you never put a turntable directly on an amplifier because of electrical interference, it needs a stable base too. So do not try this at home. It looks a budget modern turntable, which it has to be because the cast have to switch it off so that it stops without the stylus lifting. They also need access to the volume control. In the stylish room it sticks out like a sore thumb, and it is NOT one that belonged to her record label owner dad, as it is claimed. I would have it on a shelf set in the wall, and have a really cool-looking vintage set up, like a Quad 606 pre-amp and amp. A brainwave! If it goes on to London, I can sell them one (at a very high price). They might still need a budget turntable.
Early on, Hedda puts on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, at low volume. There is a shelf of LPs. It isn’t on for long. Deliberate or random? I’m sure we’re hearing the unit on stage. The later rap-oriented one looks chosen. The stand out song is played loudly over the theatre sound system, Tell All The People by The Doors, credited to all four members. It was actually written by guitarist Robby Kreiger and appears on The Soft Parade, which is not the random record she has placed on the deck. It is a careful choice, and I don’t like most Doors songs, or The Doors, but I like this one. Singer Jim Morrison hated the song, and they put a stop to the joint credit system because Jim Morrison didn’t want to be associated with it. Why? The line: Tell all the people get your guns.
Then:
Your life’s complete
Follow me down
Can’t you see me growing, get your guns …
Tell all the people that you see
We’ll be free
Follow me down
Appropriate to the story then, as it sums up the destructive Hedda-Jasper relationship, predicts the ending, and the found music is bookended by two different Morrisons. The song is an outstanding and a major event in the play and so my usual complaint, why isn’t it credited in the programme?
There are also faint background sounds, electronic, one almost like an insect buzzing. They are low level, and set an eerie mood.
RATING
Every performance is powerful, the story is harrowing raw emotion, especially from Tom Austen as Jasper. Dramatic with a capital 48 point D. It can only be four star minimum. I could be persuaded to five.
****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
Two days in a row, our rating was the same as Domenic Cavendish.
four star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ****
Cheryl Markosky, Broadway World ****
three star
Kris Hallett, What’s On Stage ***
Seth Wilby, All That Dazzles ***
Liam Arnold, Theatre & Tonic ***
two star
Arifa Akbar, Guardian **
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail **
Holly O’Mahoney, The Stage **
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
HEDDA GABLER
Hedda Gabler, new version by Brien Friel, Salisbury 2016
Hedda Tesman by Cordelia Lynn, after Ibsen Chichester 2019
MATTHEW DUNSTER|
2.22: A Ghost Story, Chichester 2024
The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh, 2023 (with Lily Allen)
Shirley Valentine, Duke of York’s 2023
True West, by Sam Shephard, West End, 2018
A Very Very Very Dark Matter, Martin McDonagh, Bridge Theatre 2018
Much Ado About Nothing, Globe, 2017
Plastic, by Marius von Mayenberg, Bath, 2017
Imogen (Cymbeline Renamed and Reclaimed) – Globe 2016
Hangmen, by Martin McDonagh, Royal Court 2015
Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford, RSC 2015
LILY ALLEN
The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh, 2023 (with Lily Allen)
BRENDAN COYLE
The Price, by Arthur Miller, Bath 2018
Downton Abbey: A New Era (film)
Downton Abbey (film) 2019
IMOGEN STUBBS
After The Dance, Terence Rattigan, BBC 1992
The Browning Version, Rattigan, BBC 1985
Communicating Doors, Ayckbourn, Menier 2015
The Hypochondriac, Moliere, Bath 2014
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