Hedda Gabler at The Lyttleton

It often feels that Ivo van Hove’s modern-dress production of Patrick Marber’s adapation of Ibsen’s classic has veered away from the original to such a degree that it is a brand new play.  But of course this is just a misconception brought about because of this amazing director’s ability to turn a classic (as he also did with the brilliant A View From The Bridge) into something fresh and new.  He is aided and abetted by a paired down but accurate new working of the text by the great Patrick Marber and Ruth Wilson, an actress who has made her name synonymous with nuance.

Hedda Gabler at The National is radical and so gripping that even those of us who know the play well wonder what will happen next.  Ruth Wilson is extraordinary, but no change there.  She was a shining star as Stella In A Streetcar Named Desire and Anna Christie both at The Donmar and continues to ensure that The Affair on Sky Atlantic is a must see.  I also remember watching her play Jane Eyre opposite Toby Stephen’s Rochester on television  some years ago and thinking this is one special actress.

And now she is Hedda Gabler, a part that she has apparently shied away from playing until now.  Ivo van Hove was one of the reasons for her volte-face and it is easy to see why.  He is the director of the moment who manages to wiggle his way into the mindset of a playwright and squeeze something extraordinary out of his/her text. 

Unlike Sheridan Smith’s more sympathetic Hedda at The Old Vic, Ruth Wilson’s version is very difficult to like.  It could be all too easy to categorise her as solely evil, if it weren’t for the fact that this young actress is able to make her so much more.  Unencumbered by corsets and the strictures of Victorian society, this modern Hedda’s “imprisonment” is of her own making.  Holed up in a stark modern apartment on return from honeymoon to the academic, Tesman (Kyle Soller) she is incapable of getting out and doing her “own thing”.  That she doesn’t love her new husband is perfectly clear (her facial expressions and body language attest to this) but this is not the elderly, domineering Tesman we’re used to seeing.  Kyle Soller plays him as intense but not without humour and the only demands he seems to make are for them to become parents asap.  Over her dead body!  Sharing an apartment with him, let alone a bed is obviously anathema to this bored, self-absorbed, at times cruel but ultimately wretched young woman.

Hedda’s raison d’etre is to destruct.  Initially it’s the buckets of flowers inhabiting the apartment that feel the brunt of her frustration; the ones that aren’t left strewn across the floor are stapled to the walls.  Finally it’s herself, but not until she has cruelly destroyed the beloved manuscript of her old flame, Lovborg (Chukwudi Iwuji).

It’s telling that there are no doors to Jan Versweyveld’s high tec apartment;  the characters, come and go via the auditorium.  Except for Berte, the maid (Eva Magyar) and Hedda herself, for they have nowhere to go.  There are visitors but they’re not particularly welcome, despite her hatred for being alone.  She is complicated this one!  Mrs Elvsted (Sinead Matthews) does illicit something approaching admiration.  She has bravely left her husband in order to be with the reformed character, Lovborg.  If only Hedda had that much courage.

Apart from the buckets of flowers, an old sofa and Hedda’s fathers’ pistols in a glass case, the only major prop on stage is an upright piano at which Hedda is slumped at the start of the play.  Barefooted and dressed in a silk, clingy slip, she tinkers on the keys and cuts a solitary figure. Later, the strains of Joni Mitchell’s Blue add to the melancholic atmosphere until, finally the inevitable happens.

The entire cast is strong, although I did have trouble hearing Kate Duchene’s Aunt Juliana at the beginning of the play.  But Rafe Spall as Judge Brack is especially fine.  The ultimate controlling male, he exerts an unsettling power over Hedda, invading her space, goading her and even covering her with his can of tomato juice.

There are many more superlatives I could use but suffice it to say this Hedda Gabler packs a devastating punch and is a definite must see.

The Children at The Royal Court

Lucy Kirkwood’s witty dialogue ensures that, despite its underlying seriousness, her new play is never depressing.  Playing at The Royal Court, The Children is set in the kitchen of a seaside cottage situated close to a nuclear power station and features three retired nuclear scientists. There has been a disaster at the station, so husband and wife, Hazel & Robin (Ron Cook and Deborah Findlay) have left their family home and moved here as it is just outside the exclusion zone.  An unexpected visitor turns up and upsets the equilibrium.  She is Rose (Francesca Annis) an old work colleague and, it appears, one time lover of roguish Robin.  Is she here to win him back or has she something more sinister in mind?  Is the sacrifice she wants them to make one step too far even for people of a certain age, especially when there are children involved.  Moreover a daughter who has “issues” and is particularly needy?

The two women couldn’t be more opposite.  Hazel, the yoga practicing,  careful and practical one, married with children and Rose, single, childless and risk taking.  Would they ever have been close friends?  Probably not, especially when we suspect that Hazel is fully aware of what has gone on between her and her husband.

The play cleverly combines the mundane with the extraordinary, the pleasant with the shocking and is acted with aplomb by all concerned.  One is in no doubt from the word go that Hazel’s reaction to Rose’s appearance is in complete contrast to her husband’s, but the sublime Deborah Findlay brilliantly goes through the motion of being the perfect welcoming host, at least until Rose pushes her to the limits.

The Children doesn’t preach about the dangers of nuclear power.  In fact it doesn’t preach at all.  The calamity at the power station is a symbol for the type of world we are bequeathing to our children and the responsibilities for which each generation is responsible.

As I have said, there are bleak themes.  Robin has made the mistake of returning to his old house to tend to the cattle they abandoned and the Geiger counter eventually reveals that he is radio active.  Cancer often rears its ugly head and day-to-day living is hard following the explosion.  But life must go on and Kirkwood relies on the British stiff upper lip and recourse to humour to ensure that her beautifully written, well directed and evocatively lit play, although dramatic in theme has more laughs than tears.