Everybody's favorite female monster is back on Broadway in a new translation by Jon Robin Baitz (Three Hotels), and none other than Richard Burton's capable daughter Kate playing the lead role. One of the unlikeliest of Broadway offerings, this Hedda Gabler is much like the bold, reptilian woman who bears the name: crafty and admirable but chilly and distant, making this well-mounted affair ultimately an exercise in futility. Instead of embracing the main character's unbridled single mindedness, Baitz's adaptation tries to dissect her a bit more, which tends to lessen the impact of her often frightening ideals. It suffers the same problems of Peter Shaffer's recent reshaping of Amadeus, which foolishly softened up the villainous Antonio Salieri to a point where we looked at the marquee again and wondered if it was really called Amadeus.
The play, focusing on Hedda's undoing of all those around her, including her affable but excitable husband George (a first rate Michael Emerson), Mrs. Elvsted (Jennifer Van Dyck, also terrific), an old school chum, and Eilert Lovborg (David Lansbury), an old flame she means to extinguish in any way possible, certainly retains a fluidity in its storytelling. Henrik Ibsen had a penchant for troubled women, and in Hedda Gabler probably created the ultimate one, a "Fatal Attraction" for the turn of the century, if you would, with much more psychological depth.
But despite Nicholas Martin's steady, unflashy direction (which really is better suited to his comedies), the material never gels, mainly because the production seems so afraid to become a period costume drama that it never quite settles into itself. It's like a decadent cake that never rises. And unfortunately despite her pedigree and considerable chops, Burton never rises to the occasion either. Her playing of the role is more sympathetic than past Heddas, but it remains too glossy, too demonstrative. A significant ambiguity seems to be lost here, which seems more crucial as the play progresses, but Burton shows us a little too much of Hedda's thought process. She fills the role nicely with a keen sense of comic timing, but we need more than that for such rich product. (The role is staggeringly similar to Chekhov's Arkadina in The Seagull and what made Meryl Streep's interpretation of the latter so memorable in Mike Nichols' searing production was her romantic gravity and eventual vulnerability.)
It seems odd that such a quaint, tasteful production is even on Broadway, and that alone gives it credence. But we wish to grasp the tragedy from within, not be mere onlookers.
