Hedda Gabler

by Henrik Ibsen

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 25 January 2017

Ivo van Hove directs Ruth Wilson as Hedda, Kyle Soller as Tesman, and Rafe Spall as Judge Brack in a new version of Iben's play modernised by Patrick Marber. Chukwudi Iwuji is Lovborg, Sinéad Matthews is Mrs Elvsted, Kate Duchene is Aunt Juliana and Éva Magyar is the maid Berte.

The setting is a bare apartment, looking all the more bare for having large expanses of unpainted walls (plastered and awaiting attention) and comparatively little furniture. This partly evokes the Tesmans' pretensions in moving into an apartment beyond their means (ironically underscored in the text by Hedda's admission that she praised the apartment on a whim), and partly reflects the aridity of Hedda's interior life. Indeed, stripped of its late 19th century social claustrophobia, the play has to focus more intently on Hedda's trapped and disintegrating psyche. As the audience files in, the maid is seated impassively to one side while Hedda sits at the piano, back to the audience, and fiddles tunelessly with the notes.

Ruth Wilson makes a fine Hedda in these circumstances, occasionally skittish, but always with a streak of desperation which can become cruelly destructive as she tries to maintain her independent spirit and misguidedly to inspire Lovborg, a move with messily fatal consequences. Kyle Soller's Tesman, a naive man totally out of his depth, is presented as a young, rather callow, American academic, utterly unaware that his boyish enthusiasms (for example, for his favourite slippers) grate poisonously on his new wife. Rafe Spall's Judge Brack, played younger than usual, is still a dangerous predator, but his nastiness stems from the confidence and sense of entitlement that raffish good looks can bestow, rather than from world-weary cynicism.

There are what can only be called classic van Hove touches - the open spaces of the stage, the idea of an almost mute chorus here personified by the constant and disquieting presence of the maid (usually seen only as needed to announce visitors), and a persistent throbbing sound during scenes of increased tension. Whether we actually need this sound to signal tension, is open to question. The play itself is written by a master dramatist at the height of his powers and the signals are already quite clear. But it is integral to this director's approach and is not unduly intrusive. The insistence on underscoring dramatic movement does, however, defuse the sense of psychological entrapment when Judge Brack emphasises his hold over Hedda by a repellent act of physical intimidation. This is visually very startling but perhaps too distracting.

It's questionable whether this play, dependent as it is on the social conventions of its time to generate the full awfulness of Hedda's predicament, can successfully be unmoored from these constraints. The social gulf which Tesman has attempted to cross by marrying into the exalted Gabler family is more difficult to recognise in a modern setting, and the nature of Hedda's disintegration is subtly shifted and weakened in this version. The most powerful Heddas that I have seen - Judy Davis and Eve Best - were inextricably enmeshed in a trap that was plain to see without recourse to the signals used here.