Hedda Tesman
by Cordelia Lynn
After Henrik Ibsen
Directed by Holly Race Roughan
Designed by Anna Fleischle
Music by Ruth Chan
Chichester Minerva Theatre
Wednesday 18th September 2019, 14.45
CAST
Haydn Gwynne – Hedda Tesman
Anthony Calf – George Tesman, Hedda’s husband
Jonathan Hyde – Brack, a judge and admirer of Hedda
Jacqueline Clarke- Julie Tesman, George’s aunt
Rebecca Oldfield – Bertha, the cleaner
Irfan Shamji – Elijah, an academic and failed Ph.D student
Natalie Simpson – Thea Tesman, now Hedda’s daughter
The first surprise is lots of empty seats at a Chichester Minerva matinee. We are used to this theatre being completely full. Maybe it is in the evenings. Chichester does incredibly well on season bookings, rather than on people booking in the last few days. After the “Friends” booking slot, it’s normally hard to get decent seats in the Minerva. You could have found great seats today easily. So is this Ibsenophobia? Does Ibsen (or “after Ibsen” here) not put bums on seats? Reviews are consistent on three stars.
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. In Ibsen’s play we knew her by her father’s name, Gabler. In this version we know her by her husband’s name, Tesman, and only Elijah calls her Hedda Gabler. Ibsen said:
“My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that Hedda as a personality is to be regarded rather as her father’s daughter than her husband’s wife.”
So that’s reversed. Now she’s Tesman. It is a rethinking of the play, not a sequel or alternative, and takes place in the present. I checked two or three scenes afterwards and in spite of the character changes, it is faithful to the plot. The Tesman’s have moved back after two years in Boston, and are just moving in to the house that George has bought because Hedda once casually said she liked it. It’s grey. Dark grey walls. Light grey floors. Old kitchen units and furniture. Packing boxes everywhere.
L to r: Hedda (Haydn Gwynne), Aunt Julia (Jacqueline Clark), George Tesman (Anthony Calf) with photo album of Boston
George is a worried, slightly bumbling academic, a subtle interpretation by Anthony Calf. George is not a high flier. His work is on Medieval Crafts in Brabant. Jacqueline Clark plays George’s Aunt Julie, and is very real, and a sympathetic character, especially in the way she deals with Hedda’s deliberate cruelty over her new hat.
The major shift is the character of Thea (Natalie Simpson) who is now Hedda and George’s daughter, and about the age of Hedda in the original play. That brings in a new dimension on mothers and daughters. Thea was an accidental pregnancy and has not seen her parents in five years. It enriches the play to me. Thea has left her husband and is now collaborating with Elijah on his masterwork on history and the future (Future Shock perhaps!). She is highly protective of Elijah, though she declares they are not lovers. She has saved him from alcoholism … only to watch Hedda shove him right back there.
A couple of reviews thought that the character of Elijah , previously known as Ejlert (Irfan Shamji), the young alcoholic academic who George has plagiarised, was now charmless. It’s been written that way and perfect physical casting enhances it.
Haydn Gwynne as Hedda
Hedda is cool, waspish, tall, thin, always immaculately dressed. Haydn Gwynne’s features are like a modernist carved sculpture. She knows that and uses them to good effect. Elijah is plump, chthonic, slobbish, scruffy, unkempt hair, unpredictable, twenty years younger. Hedda and Elijah look and sound like Jung’s shadow opposites, and we know they have past history. His death, which having given him the pistol, Hedda thought of as a romantic grand gesture, has become embarrassing and farcical – here in a bar shooting his penis off accidentally, rather than shooting himself in the stomach in a brothel in the Ibsen original. You probably have to be a Scandinavian or Russian writer to consider suicide a thing of beauty (Hedda’s words in the original) and the update works so well that the original will never sound right again … though I have seen Brack put quotation marks around ‘stomach’ and look down.
Hedda really burns the book, Elijah’s masterpiece – we were right by the stove, and the burning paper smell persisted. An extra dimension? Smell? While she kicked the stove door shut first time, she used her hand the second time. See previous review of Hedda Gabler, You can’t do that without losing the skin of your hand.
Hedda plus Brack (Jonathan Hyde)
Brack, or Judge Brack is played by Jonathan Hyde. Our rural bachelor, best pal of George and Hedda, is an urbane sophisticated Noel Coward character in this version. It worked very well for us.
The play is bookended by the cleaner, Bertha (Rebecca Oldfield) and Cordelia Lynn has improved her role. Ibsen had her as an ageing family retainer / drudge supplied by Aunt Julie. Now she’s a young mum, working for an agency and carefully referring questions back to the agency. They have added an epilogue scene between Bertha and Thea. I imagine that’s because the ending is a tad melodramatic for modern tastes, and they’re right. Scandinavian and Russian playwrights could probably buy exercise books with “A pistol shot. Curtain.” already printed on the last page.
Hedda (Haydn Gwynne) taes a shot at Brack
Overall, I found the updating a fine and interesting re-think on the play. The casting is excellent, both in acting terms and physical appearance (which is important). The performances were powerful. I’m mildly surprised at the number of three star reviews. I’m for four, while admitting that an actor has told me that the Minerva Theatre’s intimacy upscales every play performed there.
****
WORDS …
Judge Brack refers to a “trial” into Elijah’s death. It should surely be an “inquest.”
George and Hedda are presented with a photo album by Auntie Julie, collecting the photos they must have sent her from America. George describes photos in Boston with the university vice-chancellor, and chancellor. That is just about possible with chancellor (a ceremonial role) but not with vice-chancellor, which is the title of the head officer in a university in the UK, and in some Commonwealth countries. American universities do not have vice-chancellors. They mean the executive head of the university, and normally that is the president of the university in the USA.
These errors are easily corrected when (or if) it goes to the West End. But they should make those corrections. They jarred with me. Dean works in both the UK and USA.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
4 star
Ian Murray, What’s On Stage ****
3 star
Quentin Letts, Sunday Times ***
Sam Marlowe, The Times ***
What if, instead of shooting herself as a young bride, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler had stuck it out in her stifling marriage, had a baby and survived into her sixties? In Cordelia Lynn’s adaptation, updated to a present-day British university town, she’s Mrs Tesman, wife to an unimaginative, middlebrow academic, caught between a future in which she grows older and increasingly invisible, and a past littered with missed opportunities. She’s also mother to a bright young daughter of whom she is ferociously jealous?
Kate Wyver, Guardian ***
Susannah Clapp, Observer ***
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ***
Gary Naylor, Broadway World ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
HEDDA GABLER
Hedda Gabler, Brien Friel version, Salisbury 2016
HAYDN GWYNNE
Coriolanus, RSC 2017 (Volumnia)
Women on The Verge of A Nervous Breakdown, 2015
Richard III- Kevin Spacey, Old Vic (Queen Elizabeth)
ANTHONY CALF
Plenty, Chichester 2019
Racing Demon, Bath 2017
For Services Rendered, Somerset Maugham, Chichester Minerva
NATALIE SIMPSON
Boudica, Globe 2017
King Lear, RSC, 2016 (Cordelia)
Hamlet, RSC 2016 Stratford, (Ophelia)
Cymbeline – RSC 2016 (Guideria)
Measure for Measure, Young Vic, 2015