Hedda Gabler, a wicked woman for all times
Remake of Ibsen classic is as relevant today as it was 135 years ago ... so let's stop blaming modern life for mankind's descent into depravity
The moment you step into the Baxter Flipside for the reworking of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, the set commands your attention. A stylish and expansive space, a large glass box of a loft apartment perhaps, here is a home that suggests wealth and comfort, people who have ‘arrived’ and got their shit together.
But you know what they say about appearances. By the time you leave the theatre, 90 minutes later, the set has been completely destroyed by an explosion of life, love and loss. Strewn with flowers, dirt and blood, it is a more fitting setting for the lives and the relationships played out there. It is as messy as life can get.
The chaos, corruption, broken lives and twisted relationships seem a lot more 1980 than 1890, when Ibsen wrote the play, but perhaps that is the point. Even if the material has been totally revamped and reworked from the version written 135 years ago, the characters and the couplings, the fights, the flaws and the human failings are as universal as they are timeless.
The whole 90 minutes is compelling viewing and not just because of so many flashes of familiarity: people we know, conversations we have had, weaknesses and wickedness that we recognise in others (and ourselves).
Rolanda Marais absolutely owns the stage as Hedda Gabbler, the femme fatale, the bitch who we hate to love. It can sometimes feel like a one-woman show, that is except when she is toying playfully and so very unkindly with Ashley de Lange’s Tia (or is it Mia), the foolish one who makes you want to hug her and slap her all at once. Somehow, we know very early that even if Hedda is the queen, the adored one, the slow-motion car crash that transfixes us, De Lange’s character is the one that the action turns on.
Without knowing the original play by Henrik Ibsen, it is hard to imagine how true Christiaan Olwagen’s version is to the original text, but then these characters and themes are universal and timeless. Perhaps we should stop blaming modern life, the internet, alcohol, modern parenting, the workplace, the church, America, you name it for twisting people and warping life. We are all a mess, and wickedness and weakness are natural conditions, not exceptions.
Let’s just stop trying to work out when it started to go bad and what caused mankind’s decline into depravity. Let’s just forgive ourselves and each other, and get on with enjoying this messy thing called life and love.
It is hard to believe that this formidable cast (Marais, De Lange and Albert Pretorius, Martelize Kolver, Ludwig Binge and Stian Bam) performed the play in Afrikaans in the same venue for two weeks before this, its English debut. Damn, that’s impressive.
On at Baxter until May 25. Tickets
When Christiaan Olwagen was Standard Bank Artist of the Year, he put on the most extraordinary production of The Doll's House. So looking forward to this one – thank you for your excellent review.