Femme fatale

>> MainLine Theatre brings Ibsen’s provocative Hedda Gabler from the stuffy Victorian drawing room to the plasticized propriety of the 1950s

HEADSTRONG HEROINE: Patricia Summersett

by AMY BARRATT

Dimly lit, low-ceilinged, with red and yellow flames painted on the floor, the MainLine Theatre lobby looks more heavy metal than heavy drama. Despite being up a steep interior staircase from the Main, it manages to feel like a basement rec room. Legend has it artistic director Jeremy Hechtman won the place in a card game about three years ago, and if that’s not true, who wants to know?

On a recent afternoon, I sat with Hechtman and actress Patricia Summersett in the dilapidated conversation pit at the centre of the space to talk about MainLine’s upcoming show, Hedda Gabler.

This is the company that brought us Vampire Lesbians of Sodom early last year, and the year before that, an original musical called Johnny Canuck and the Last Burlesque. It must be said, an 1890 masterpiece by the father of modern drama doesn’t seem like the most natural progression for them. Can we look forward to the “mainlining” of this Henrik Ibsen classic about a woman who chafes against the roles and behaviours her society considers womanly?

“I don’t know how much of a departure it is for us,” says Hechtman. “True, it’s not a comedy…”

“Some people consider it a very dark comedy,” interjects Summersett.

“Right, but it’s not camp,” says Hechtman. “We like to think what you get from MainLine is a unique theatre experience, and you’ll get that with this production. This is not a stuffy Victorian Hedda Gabler.”

Hedda on roller skates

For starters, Hechtman, who directs the show, has chosen to work with Canadian playwright Judith Thompson’s sharp, brash adaptation of the original Norwegian text. When this version was first produced at the Shaw Festival in 1991, it moved so quickly that one wag referred to it as “Hedda Gabler on roller skates.” Now that sounds like a MainLine show.

Though the MainLine production will not feature wheeled footwear, it is set in the decade of the roller skate’s greatest popularity, the 1950s. This Hedda does not wear a poodle skirt, however, nor does she come on the run with a burger on a bun. She lives in a frosty late ’50s New England that owes more to Edward Albee than Hanna-Barbera. “When Patrick Goddard and I were debating what play to do this January,” says Hechtman, “he recommended Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And I said, well, if we’re going to do Virginia Woolf, we might as well do Hedda.”

Hechtman had first come in contact with Thompson’s translation in 2003 when he participated in an Imago Theatre “Director’s Gym” led by Peter Hinton. Five emerging directors were given a section of Hedda to work on with a group of actors under the mentorship of Hinton (now artistic director of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa). Hechtman’s decision to set the play in the ’50s and to draw inspiration from Albee’s twisted portrait of a marriage dates from that workshop.

“I’ve wanted to do the whole play ever since,” he says.

First-wave feminist

Like so many of Ibsen’s plays, Hedda Gabler sparked controversy when it was first produced. Critics found it immoral. The central character was not just unlikable, they said, she was an impossibility. Ibsen was accused of creating a monster in woman’s form. She was “unnatural” because she was cold to her husband and seemed repelled by the idea of motherhood. People expected the protagonist—which, as title character, Hedda presumably is—to be admirable; they wanted plays to be uplifting.

Arguably, there is a desire, even in today’s audiences, for stories that end justly—that is, with the people we like coming out on top. But who exactly is there to like in Hedda Gabler? There’s no denying General Gabler’s daughter behaves like a serious bitch much of the time. Her husband, the bourgeois Tesman, and his aunt Juliana, are “nice” enough, but dull and silly: that much is clear to the audience within minutes. Other characters are too easily manipulated by Hedda for us to find them admirable. Although Hedda doesn’t exactly come to a happy end, neither is she reformed or punished, as Victorian audiences might have expected.

For director Hechtman, Ibsen is attacking the morality of his day, which was often little more than a veneer hiding all sorts of nastiness. The ’50s, he says, are similar except that it wasn’t the appearance of morality but the appearance of propriety that needed to be maintained. In other words, you could get away with a lot of cheating, fighting, drinking and fornicating as long as everything looked proper to the outside world.

“The ’50s are supposed to be America at its best,” says Hechtman, “yet they’re so full of hypocrisy. Anybody who spoke out was anti-American. They’re supposed to have won freedom in the war, but those ideals have been corrupted. Hedda had ideals, but they’ve been corrupted and twisted into something else.”

Another inspiration for the production, particularly in terms of look, is the Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven, which also revealed some of the rot lurking behind the decade’s perfect Technicolor image.

Enduring enigma

In a 2005 production of the Thompson adaptation of Hedda Gabler for Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, director Ross Manson set the first half of the play in the Victorian period and the second half in contemporary Toronto. The fact that Manson could do that and that MainLine can move the action to the ’50s, “speaks to how timeless the play is,” according to Hechtman. “Hedda was controversial at the time because she wanted out of the roles being thrust upon her. Even though the same doors aren’t necessarily closed to women now, people still feel the pressure of roles.” Just ask Hillary Clinton.

“The play is full of all the same emotions as it was then. It’s the same source, however it reveals itself,” says Summersett.

Perhaps what has made Hedda Gabler, the play, endure for well over a century is that the title character remains an enigma. Critics and scholars continue to debate who she is and why she acts the way she does. The play has been labelled a tragedy, a melodrama, a black comedy and has been deconstructed practically beyond recognition.

Summersett has done a lot of reading and thinking about this iconic character. “People always ask if she’s a hero or a villain. Why does she have to be one or the other?

“It’s a great responsibility and a great opportunity,” says Summersett. “What better role to get to know myself as an actor?”

Meanwhile, Ibsen has been interpreted as supporting or prefiguring nearly every significant movement of the past century—socialist, symbolist, humanist, feminist, psychoanalytic… Okay, as far as I know, there hasn’t been a nudist interpretation of Ibsen. (Hedda Gabler in the Buff: Now that sounds like a MainLine show.)

During the course of the interview with Hechtman and his Hedda, other cast members filtered in: Patrick Goddard who plays the husband, Tesman, Neil Napier (Judge Brack, the only character who matches Hedda in intelligence and cunning), Catherine Bérubé (Thea Elvsted). They’re part of a core group of actors whose faces MainLine audiences are getting used to seeing. MainLine audiences, according to Hechtman, are a special breed.

“The audience for this show is the same as the audience for Johnny Canuck and Vampire Lesbians—it’s a lot of people who’ve never set foot in a theatre before.”

Hedda Gabler, Jan. 30–Feb. 16 (preview Jan. 29)
at MainLine Theatre (3997 st-laurent). Tickets (514)
849-3378. More info: www.montrealfringe.ca