STAGE WEST: "Hedda Gabler" at the Old Globe Theatre

Katie Holmes and Alexander Hurt in "Hedda Gabler."                                           Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Hedda Gabler is among the most fascinating characters in all of theater, someone whose cerebral wheels are always turning, a woman of passions and impulses that won’t be restrained.
            She is also, as created by Henrik Ibsen, an enigmatic protagonist that challenges critical analysis – and yet scholars and theater critics (myself included) can’t resist the challenge.
            The Hedda in the Old Globe’s production of “Hedda Gabler,” a new adaptation by Erin Cressida Wilson from a translation by Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey, so commands the evolving drama that all of the principals in her sphere – her ambitious but oft-clueless husband, the men who lust for her and strive to overpower her, the anxious onetime schoolmate – are either pawns in her mind games or foredoomed supplicants of sorts. Only when one of them seizes power from her does Hedda founder, and that will be sudden and everlasting.
            Barry Edelstein directs a “Hedda Gabler” that moves purposefully along over the course of one 100-minute act. Though the play has its noisier confrontations, it is a talky affair, and it’s to the director’s credit that the tension therein is consistent and taut.
            Katie Holmes, whom Edelstein directed in Anna Ziegler’s “The Wanderers” three years ago at Roundabout Theatre in New York, is a charismatic, contemporary-seeming Hedda Gabler, the latter accomplished not only through Holmes’ layered performance but because of Wilson’s script, the language and nuances of which transcend the period costumes and manners of late-19th-century Kristiania, Norway. Holmes’ Hedda, trapped rather than lapped in the luxury of the Tesman household, is playful one minute, cruel the next, either impetuously tinkling at the piano or taunting or tempting her would-be lovers.
            For the duration of the play Hedda’s arena is the Tesman drawing room, thoughtfully realized onstage by scenic designer Mark Wendland. The conspicuous, ornate furnace/stove is the only thing that towers over her; a couch that threatens to stretch the length of the room might as well represent the gulf between the newly married George Tesman (Charlie Barnett), a babe in his own woods, and the flaring, fiery (when she wants to be) Hedda.
            This production is accompanied by recurring piano music performed by Korrie Yamaoka, a not altogether effective device in my mind. I found its presence intrusive more than atmospheric.
            As always at the Globe, costume design by David I. Reynoso is ideal to the time and the storytelling.
            In support of Holmes, Alexander Hurt is intensity personified as the neurotic writer Ejlert Lovborg in whose spell a frantic Thea Elvsted (Hedda’s former schoolmate, played by Celeste Arias) is captive. Alfredo Narciso is calculating, blackmailing Judge Brack. Saidah Arrika Ekulona (as George’s aunt) and Katie MacNichol (as Berte the housekeeper) round out a steady cast.
            This is Holmes’ show, however, and she joins a distinguished list of actors who’ve portrayed Hedda Gabler onstage including Maggie Smith, Glenda Jackson and Cate Blanchett and, more recently, Ruth Wilson and Tessa Thompson. It’s appropriate that her performance never reels out of control given that Hedda herself seeks and prizes control, especially over others, as insatiably as she does. If Holmes’ Hedda is unsympathetic, that’s how so many have viewed Ibsen’s character for decades. Considering the Tesman household it’s hard to begrudge her her boredom at the least and perhaps not her burning machinations, either. One literal burning is paramount.
            Wilson’s Globe-commissioned adaptation adds some humor to the story and updated language somewhat suggests a “Hedda Gabler” in the here and now. An exasperated George even lets out a “WTF!” (but unabbreviated) at one point. The same could be exclaimed by Hedda if she took a long look around her claustrophobic post-“honeymoon” home and pondered the price of aristocracy.
            “Hedda Gabler” runs through March 22 at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park.