By Annika Eragam
Hedda Gabler
Yale Repertory Theatre
1120 Chapel St.
Through Dec. 20
She’s just handed over her pistol, a choice that sets in motion the many tragic events of the evening. But for now, Marianna Gailus, the production’s titular Hedda Gabler, seems manic. She prattles around the stage, laughing to herself. The laugh unfurls like a firework, tapering off only to spark again in periodic shrieks. It is at once guilty, congratulatory, and hysteric. Gailus ends sitting in front of a furnace, the sinister orange glow engulfing her face.
This is perhaps Hedda Gabler as we know her best. Dubbed “a female Hamlet,” Hedda is a coveted role for the many faces she dons — seductress, instigator, domestic imperialist. Henrik Ibsen first introduced her at the Residenztheater in Munich in 1891, just three years prior to when the first-wave feminist writer Sarah Grand proposed the “New Woman.” This woman was educated, independent, and often affluent, rejecting domestic convention. Hedda Gabler was an early prototype — messy, ambitious, intelligent. Certainly not warm. Definitely not matronly. An anti-hero whose only obsession is her freedom.
Under Yale School of Drama Dean James Bundy’s direction, Hedda’s menace was skillfully choreographed. Early on, the terrified Mrs. Elvsted takes a seat next to her on a bench. Hedda slowly unfurls her arm around the woman’s shoulder — a subtle and possessive gesture. Later, after a joking threat to shoot Judge Brack, he pries the pistol from her hands. She loops her arm around his, as if they’re out for a stroll in the park. After another tense exchange where Mr. Løvborg attempts to take another swig of his drink, Hedda holds out her hand. Enough, she seems to say, slowly prying away the glass. Her manipulation of each moment is captivating. In this physicality, Gailus shines.
Yet, for all her influence, it would be a mistake to assume Hedda is a champion of her sex. This was a rude awakening to the woman sitting next to me at Tuesday evening’s production at the Yale Repertory Theater. In her 60s, she was a devoted Ibsenite but had not yet made Hedda’s acquaintance. “I thought this was supposed to be a feminist play,” she told me at the intermission. “This girl’s just bored. And mean.” It’s true that Hedda’s desire for freedom is one that comes at the cost of every life she touches. Manipulative and spiteful, jealous and bitter, she conflates agency with power. “Just once in my life I want to help shape someone’s destiny,” she says, and it is this incendiary desire that leads her to meddle in the fates of everyone from Mrs. Elvsted (Stephanie Machado) to Mr. Løvborg (James Udom).
What makes Hedda not likeable exactly (because that was never the goal) but at least relatable is her sense of futility. “I had simply danced myself out, my dear sir,” she tells Judge Brack (Austin Durant), a dual confidante and aggressor. Their scenes together had the best chemistry of the night, as he is perhaps the only character Hedda respects enough to spar with. “My time was up,” she continues. This is why she’s entered into a marriage with the cerebral Jorgen Tesman (Max Gordon Moore), whose geniality Moore brought alive and whose scholarliness bores the life right out of Hedda. In fact, everything about her life seems to bore her.
In Act Two, a well-staged moment highlights Hedda’s festering desire for escape. As the men get ready for Judge Brack’s party, she asks if she might be able to come along. They wave her aside, laughter echoing down the hallway as they exit. The lighting, warm and buoyant up till now, suddenly feels jaundiced. The grand foyer of the Prime Minister’s house (which Aunt Tesman chastises is out of their price range) is all too small.
It’s a testament to Jessie Baldinger’s thoughtful scenic design that the wallpaper, emerald with a lace-like pattern, evokes both Hedda’s envy and enclosure. The lighting design by Larry Oritz was a highlight of the production, with the day transitioning from hazy afternoons to eerie evenings. In one scene, after she has committed an act unthinkable, Hedda draws all the curtains shut and the house transforms into something like a mausoleum.
As the women sit together after the men’s departure, it reminded me of Kate Chopin’s famed 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper (published only a year after Hedda’s debut), in which the narrator is confined to a nursery room. Growing bored and restless, she eventually begins obsessing over a woman whom she believes is trapped in the wallpaper. Like Hedda, Chopin’s protagonist is of the bourgeois class. Like Hedda, she craves “society and stimulus” that feels out of reach. In one scene, Tesman bemoans how unfortunate it is that he’ll never get to see Hedda as a proper hostess. Like Hedda, Chopin’s protagonist has a well-meaning if inert husband. Like Hedda, she never seems to leave the house.
Boredom can be written off as the affliction of a privileged woman who has nothing better to do than manipulate the lives of those around her. At times, it felt like the Rep’s production veered into this reading. But boredom is also stifling, oppressive. As the author Olive Screiner wrote in 1911, industrialization reinscribed men as the primary laborers, rendering upper-class women to a state of “morbid inactivity.”
“I am dying of all this,” Hedda says, having returned from a weary honeymoon with Tesman. She sees death in everything — even the lively flowers littering the stage when the curtains draw open. Then there’s Tesman’s meager salary. “How poor I am,” she bemoans, and later: “This wretched poverty!” Both instances earn an ironic chuckle from the crowd. She is, after all, in the Prime Minister’s old mansion.
By the end, I had the sense that the crowd was fed up. As Tesman and Mrs. Elvsted join forces, they ignore Hedda. “I can hear you, you know,” she says, peeking her head through the curtain in a memorable moment à la The Shining. As she plays a discordant piano riff, holing herself away, it feels like a teenager slamming the door. The Hedda we ended the night with rang somewhat petulant, brattish. This sense of flippancy was emphasized by the staging of the ending, which struck like a scene you’d stumble across at a Halloween House of Horrors. The woman next to me, at least, seemed satisfied. That cruel, pompous Hedda Gabler got what she deserved.
But I felt a twinge of defensiveness. Hedda’s haughtiness and sardonism were well-captured by Gailus. As she moved across the stage in stunning empresslike gowns designed by Lyle Qin, she commanded the room with regality. Gailus’ Hedda was funny, and often it felt like her disdain with the other “numbskulls” of the play was a private joke she had deigned us, the audience, worthy to partake in. Yet, Hedda’s irritation that night rarely morphed into true rage. She came across fairly even-tempered. Perhaps this is a testament to her sense of social propriety, which dooms her from any real chance of liberation. But I found myself wishing for the armour to crack, for her sense of suffocation to reach a boiling point. “What about me?” she asks at the finale, “How am I to get through the evenings out here?” Tesman waves her aside, but she’s serious. She’s been clawing up the wall. We are vindicated by her fate. But it’s meant to be devastating.
Machado’s Mrs. Elvsted felt more urgent, laced with a frantic anxiety. As Mr. Løvborg tries to break off their engagement, she insists: “Wherever you are, that’s where I’ll be.” Her attachment with him is one she can’t afford to lose. She begs that he not be reckless with his manuscript. After all, she had a hand in it. “My child!” she calls it, and her adamance is admirable. She’s left her husband. Her hysteria soars as she tries to hold tight to what she has.
In the finale, there is a small moment where Hedda’s anguish, too, makes an appearance. Judge Brack takes a seat in an armchair, toying around with the ottoman in front of it. He eventually places it next to him, patting the seat for Hedda to come sit. “So I’m in your power,” she relents, weary. It pained me to see the towering Hedda forced into a child’s seat. But there’s a moment before sitting where she eyes the ottoman — trying to decide, her rage and desolation silently brewing. It is in that beat I think she made her fateful decision. No one tells Hedda to sit down.
