Theater Review
Hedda Gabler - Roundabout Theatre Company
Drew Beemer
Issue date: 5/1/09 Section: Arts
In recent years the "non-profit" Roundabout has been capitalizing on the delightful fact that it can charge Broadway ticket prices while paying its high-profile stars relative peanuts for the privilege of doing legit theater. The results have been mixed; some of the folks lured from L.A. to the N.Y. stage should have stayed home (I'm looking at you, L.A. Law alum Harry Hamlin...
remember your ghastly turn in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke? And by the way, Lisa Rinna is really weird-looking.). This time around, however, with Mary Louise Parker in omnipotent control of the RTC proceedings, Henrik Ibsen's brooding classic reaches new depths of nihilism.
Full disclosure: I am a rabid fan of Ms. Parker's. I love Weeds. I have loved her since she played (2008's other overdose victim) Brad Renfro's white trash mom in The Client. Everyone calls her quirky...I think she's hot.
Here, as reluctant newlywed Hedda Tesman, Ms. Parker exudes effortlessly the ennui of a hollow woman who never should have gotten married, at least not to her husband, the overeager Jorgen (Michael Cerveris). He is a bright and ambitious scholar, but totally oblivious as to the severity of his wife's mental state. He is too busy planning for a future he will never share with his beloved. Meanwhile, popping by intermittently are the affable rogue, Judge Brack (Peter Stormare, best known as the loony Russian in Armageddon), Jorgen's sweet Aunt Juliane (Helen Carey), and Thea Elvsted (Anna Reeder), whose perky presence Hedda finds vexing to say the least. Hedda's kindred spirit, if indeed she has one, is the erratic, frustrated writer, Ejlert Lovborg, played with vigor and wrenching anguish by Paul Sparks. Hedda and Lovborg have a mysterious past, revealed in tragic detail over the course of the play.
The music by PJ Harvey establishes a sullen mood. The spare, melancholic set, designed by Hildegard Bechtler and lit in the shroud of terminal late afternoon by Natasha Katz, is inhabited by a host of unfulfilled souls. Hedda is trapped in a passionless marriage; Brack is a lonely playboy past his prime; Aunt Juliane is weary from caring for her dying sister; Mrs. Elvsted, imagining herself a muse, is hopelessly in love with Lovborg; and Jorgen is pinning his hopes to a new professorship…for which he is competing with the vastly more talented, yet self-destructive Lovborg.
remember your ghastly turn in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke? And by the way, Lisa Rinna is really weird-looking.). This time around, however, with Mary Louise Parker in omnipotent control of the RTC proceedings, Henrik Ibsen's brooding classic reaches new depths of nihilism.
Full disclosure: I am a rabid fan of Ms. Parker's. I love Weeds. I have loved her since she played (2008's other overdose victim) Brad Renfro's white trash mom in The Client. Everyone calls her quirky...I think she's hot.
Here, as reluctant newlywed Hedda Tesman, Ms. Parker exudes effortlessly the ennui of a hollow woman who never should have gotten married, at least not to her husband, the overeager Jorgen (Michael Cerveris). He is a bright and ambitious scholar, but totally oblivious as to the severity of his wife's mental state. He is too busy planning for a future he will never share with his beloved. Meanwhile, popping by intermittently are the affable rogue, Judge Brack (Peter Stormare, best known as the loony Russian in Armageddon), Jorgen's sweet Aunt Juliane (Helen Carey), and Thea Elvsted (Anna Reeder), whose perky presence Hedda finds vexing to say the least. Hedda's kindred spirit, if indeed she has one, is the erratic, frustrated writer, Ejlert Lovborg, played with vigor and wrenching anguish by Paul Sparks. Hedda and Lovborg have a mysterious past, revealed in tragic detail over the course of the play.
The music by PJ Harvey establishes a sullen mood. The spare, melancholic set, designed by Hildegard Bechtler and lit in the shroud of terminal late afternoon by Natasha Katz, is inhabited by a host of unfulfilled souls. Hedda is trapped in a passionless marriage; Brack is a lonely playboy past his prime; Aunt Juliane is weary from caring for her dying sister; Mrs. Elvsted, imagining herself a muse, is hopelessly in love with Lovborg; and Jorgen is pinning his hopes to a new professorship…for which he is competing with the vastly more talented, yet self-destructive Lovborg.
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
CV writer
posted 12/02/09 @ 10:36 PM EST
Thanks for such an interesting theater review.
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posted 12/09/09 @ 12:28 AM EST
It is a very intresting article.
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posted 2/02/10 @ 9:26 AM EST
That music is really melancholic.
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