I don't think I've ever hated a character on Theatre Northwest's stage before, but I do now. Oh, Hedda, you deserve to boil in your own stew.
It's a delicious kind of disdain for Hedda - the kind audiences have savoured for the likes of J.R. Ewing (Dallas), Benjamin Linus (Lost), Negan (The Walking Dead), and Gus (Breaking Bad) - characters who were not the show's villain per se, but drew us in to see just what poison they were going to serve us next. Mwhahahaha.
Now, thanks to playwright-director Jack Grinhaus, we have Hedda.
In fairness, Grinhaus wrote the play Hedda Noir (on now at TNW) based on the great Henrik Ibsen script Hedda Gabler. But let's be honest, today's audiences prefer even legendary plays to be modernized. This was an impressive renovation.
For those who don't know the Ibsen original, Hedda Gabler is the daughter of the deceased General Gabler. She just married rising academic star George Tesman, and she couldn't be more pissed off about it.
In fact, she's hostile to just about everything. The only thing that makes her laugh is other people's pain.
There's plenty of it to go around in her aristocratic small circle.
To her chagrin, her husband keeps appearing in the room no matter how cruel she is to him.
She makes it clear that his aunt Julia is an unwelcome guest.
George's friend Judge Brack is frequently coming in through the backdoor for reasons that soon become illicitly plain.
Then there's Elliot Lovborg, an old friend of the group and partial rival to George (in more than one way), although George likes him despite all.
Reluctantly stuck in this barbed batch is Lovborg's mistress Thea whom Hedda has belittled since grade school.
These are all Ibsen's people, but Grinhaus advances everything into the style of the 1930s classic film.
It's called Hedda Noir because of that black-and-white cinematic feel of All About Eve or Sunset Boulevard.
This gets brilliantly established with the opening credits. When's the last time you saw a play that had opening credits? Smooth. What a setup to the action about to unfold.
You know what they say in theatre: if there's a piano in the first act, it goes off in the second. The same is said for guns and Hedda loves her pistols.
The action starts slowly but not the dialogue. I admit I felt a little muddled at first by the early flurry of characters. Others in the audience concurred. The script moved faster, in the first 20 minutes, than the crowd's mind.
A playwright never wants his/her audience to feel stupid or left behind, but this story has a way of catching us all up. By the end, things are clear, including the fact we were supposed to be confused.
It is a mystery movie, er, play. Grinhaus both adapted and translated (the Hedda Gabler original is in Norwegian) his way to a hard-boiled classic who-dun-it, or perhaps better described as a why-dun-it. What's the reason Hedda is such a jerk to everyone?
The script - the original and the adaptation - give us a symbolic hint of the answer. Hedda is the daughter not of a business tycoon, not a doctor, not a star athlete, but a general. A dead general. And she has his guns left behind as a prized sentimental legacy.
As all good literary characters do, Hedda represents us all. She is an artistic representation of we who live in a peaceable society thanks to the grand gestures of military men in bygone days.
We have no war in our own streets, but we have the tools and the tactics and the innate violence built into all people. Out of boredom and civility, we wage war on those around us, our battlefields are the parlours of our otherwise safe homes.
That's heavy - as heavy as the human condition itself. Such a weight cannot be placed on a weak actor. We in Prince George have seen Lauren Brotman before, as the veritable artist-in-residence at TNW. Grinhaus wrote this script especially for her. We have never seen her in such a lavish part, it's a hurricane, but she carries it like Thor wields his hammer. Brotman establishes herself as a Wonder Woman of the Canadian stage.
Grinhaus knew Brotman and Hedda both deserved an all-star cast to surround her. You could isolate each one of the supporting members and call the performance splendid.
Stewart Arnott is an epic Judge Brack. A lesser actor might have overplayed the greasy snake, but in Arnott's hands Brack slid handsomely through the garden gate and into our hearts despite our dislike of him.
You recognize he's a conniver, yet no one in the audience would deny they'd love to have a drink with the charmer anyway. And Arnott's voice is one of those gifts to the ear, worth the price of admission just to hear him speak.
Ian Farthing has another difficult balance to strike. As Hedda's befuddled husband, he has to be perpetually two steps behind her plotting but never come across as stupid. Farthing cooks him up in a tasty recipe of naivety and goodheartedness, salted with selfishness and some cunningness of his own. He is no saint despite his aww-shucks surface.
Ray Strachan has the job of rendering Elliot Lovborg, the brilliant academic who's constantly defeated by addictions to alcohol and Hedda. Strachan is stage savvy in his calm delivery, showing the audience the necessary mannerisms to believe that power and the collapse are always peering together over the brink of his next decision.
Thea seems less dimensional than the more prominent characters, but in fact she quietly shines with multiple colours. Thankfully these quiet complexities are served by Sharmila Dey (remember her stellar work as Alice in TNW's production of Alice In Wonderland?)
Thea appears meek, but there is also something alluring, a lost soul and a narcissist together, but Dey juggles it all.
We don't see much of Aunt Julia, and at first I was skeptical of Deborah Drakeford in the role.
Not because of her acting skill - that is considerable, you'll soon see - but because of her age.
Why, I wondered, did Grinhaus cast one so young as someone I felt was considerably older?
Then I saw the monologue. Lost art, that, the dramatic monologue. The Ibsen script didn't have one for Aunt Julia, but Grinhaus penned a powerhouse and bestowed it like a flower.
Drakeford made a bouquet of it. It wouldn't surprise me to see this monologue enter the canon of solos used in speech arts festivals and acting auditions.
The monologue these days seems to show up as an expository rant at the end, a writing crutch to blast the audience with all the information the playwright couldn't figure out how to show us, so instead told it in a spew.
Oh, not this one. It is a work of its own art, and a major plot twist hinges on it. It needed Drakeford.
She's the first one to give it voice. All of these performances are first-time deliveries. This is the world premier of Hedda Noir.
To savour this acting clinic rolled up into a smoldering cigarette of lavish costumes and stunning sets, go to TNW before this dark, smoky mystery case is closed.
