Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (Hughes)
THE STORY: Less than forty-eight hours after returning from a luxurious honeymoon, the former Hedda Gabler, now Hedda Tesman, lies dead in the parlor of her new home, the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Ibsen’s terse masterpiece unflinchingly leads us to this shocking but inevitable conclusion. At the center of the play is one of the greatest roles in modern drama, the fascinating Hedda Gabler, who finds herself stranded in a seemingly ordinary but dangerously imbalanced domestic system. It includes her husband, the ambitious scholar George Tesman; his doting aunt Julie; and the powerful Judge Brack, who seems intent on playing a very large role in the young couple’s life. Into this mix comes an old schoolmate of Hedda’s, Thea Elvsted, who has courageously abandoned a loveless marriage in favor of a passionate partnership with the troubled Eilert Lovborg, a brilliant thinker and an academic rival of Tesman’s who shares an intense secret history with Hedda. Employing methods that virtually defined the modern psychological drama, Ibsen stealthily reveals the bitter conflicts and thwarted longings that lie just below the “civilized” transactions of daily life.
“…stunning…amazingly contemporary in its considerations of the purpose of life, of the preservation of dignity and integrity…the big issues people don’t dare to think about. And here is a staging that does not turn away…” —The New York Times.
“…by far the best play of the season…HEDDA GABLER has so many layers. The tragedy plays upon the irony, which acts upon fully drawn characters to make up a thoroughly modern work…” —Connecticut Post.
“When Henrik Ibsen…wrote HEDDA GABLER 110 years ago, a woman’s place in society was far different from what it is today. The fact that this psychological drama plays as well now as it did a century ago is apt tribute to the sheer genius of the playwright.” —Record-Journal (CT).
