This is not your schoolroom Ibsen. Over a hundred years after his tale of an angry housewife's misanthropic machinations shocked audiences, Nigel O'Hearn's translation, titled “A Hedda Gabler,” has winnowed its progress to an efficiency better suiting the small stages of our time. More noticeable, however, are the changes to the locale and presentation rendered this Red Tape Theatre production in pursuit of facilitating accessibility to modern audiences. The time remains 1890, but the home of George and Hedda Tesman (née Gabler) is now a gloomy mansion in our nation's Deep South, sporting a leaking roof requiring a drip bucket during heavy rains and furnished in funereal greens and purples. (Its new mistress complains that it smells of "dead lavender.") The newlyweds have just returned from their honeymoon, so the wilted flowers strewn about the parlor may be merely coincidental, but the bride's conviction that she has chosen the wrong husband is irrefutable. Acknowledging the number of marriages based in filial pressure, the "custom of the country" granted tolerance to spouses conducting extramarital affairs, with the stipulation that these remain discreet, scandal being the sole unforgivable sin of the ruling class. This might suggest a more permissive social dynamic than in Ibsen's day, but the proud daughter of General Gabler vows to choose her own cicisbeo. Refusing the advances of the lecherous Judge Brack, she strives to rekindle her volatile connection with ex-beau Eilert — once a hard-drinking playboy, but recently transformed into a serious and sober scholar under the influence of his selfless female companion, Thea. To ensure that we understand what spurs our frustrated heroine to initiate mischief that will destroy whatever future happiness she may salvage from her impetuous error, the surface realism of Joanna Iwanika and Abigail Cain's antebellum decor has been tweaked to introduce such expressionistic elements as a Victrola-era gramophone on which Hedda plays music-box arrangements of romantic Disney ballads as she vents her fury in wild impassioned dances until, exhausted, she gazes wistfully at a birdcage suspended in the center of the room. Director Max Truax has assembled an ensemble capable of portraying these extravagant emotions, retaining control of their text even when locking eyes with playgoers barely an arm's length away. In the title role, Aayisha Humphrey delivers a spellbinding performance, pursuing her single-minded schemes with the leisurely concentration of a snake stalking its prey, riveting our attention for the 100 intermissionless minutes of the play's duration as surely as her bad behavior transcends our disapproval to merit our sympathies.
