Hedda Gabler

I saw Hedda Gabler last Friday night. It was my second attempt to see it; the first time I went, a week before, I had to really talk myself into it. I was pooped as pooped could be that day and really wanted to go home and crash. With the help of a coworker, I convinced myself to go. I went out to dinner by myself at the Edison Cafe, reading some homework over a sandwich. I got to the theater around 7:50, and the lobby was teeming with people. They hadn’t opened the house yet, which is definitely a sign that something is amiss. A few minutes after I got there, they announced that Mary Louise Parker wouldn’t be performing that night. The cast (along with MLP, it stars Michael Cerveris (a great stage actor I’m sure most of you haven’t heard of but who I love) and Peter Stormare (the guy from those weird VW commercials and, probably more famously, Abruzzi in Prison Break) was a big part of why I was attending. Along with half the audience, I decided to trade my ticket in for a different performance; this is allowed whenever someone above the title is out. It must be hard to be the understudy for a famous actor, always going on to half empty houses and knowing that even the people who stuck it out are annoyed to see you but just didn’t feel like traveling into the city again a different night. I’m convinced that MLP was just being a diva that night, too. It doesn’t take until 7:55 to realize that your leading lady has laryngitis, but it could take that long to realize that you can’t convince her to stop throwing a hissy fit. Of course, it could be something far more innocent, but until I have proof I’m going to assume it was a tantrum,-induced absence.

I went back the other night and saw it with the full cast on display. The show was uneven, but I liked it well enough to stay through the second act. I thought Peter Stormare was weird (I guess that’s his thing); it was like he had wandered in from a different production. Cerveris played Jorgen Tesman as something of a simpleton, and I wished that he’d imbued the character with more depth. It’s well within his acting abilities to do. Parker was mostly excellent, though she has some Parker-ish inflections that seem to creep in whether she’s playing a miserable 19th century woman, a 1980s pill-addicted loon, or a modern day pot mom. Still, I love her, so I guess it’s ok.

The second act left me less impressed than the first, but I’d still recommend the show for theater people, provided you can get a cheap ticket (the $20 Hip Tix, for instance). It’s not worth a bigger investment than that, unfortunately.