The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, September 29 - October 9

by Michael Meigs

The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty has an abundance of clever and not much of depth or heart. Director David M. Long does a bang-up job of making it a whizzing entertainment, having recruited three gifted Equity professionals to work with the six St. Ed's Equity-candidate actors relegated to secondary roles.

Playwright Whitty starts with an intriguing hypothetical: what happens to Ibsen's Hedda Gabler after she so famously commits suicide in the last scene of the 1890 play of the same name? We watch Hedda awake in an afterlife, confused, looking around to decipher the only partly familiar world around her. She rises from the 19th century sofa and discovers that her pillow is drenched with blood but she is apparently unharmed. Then her worst nightmare appears: her husband George Tesman, pained and concerned for her. Won't that man ever go away? Not even beyond the grave?

Whitty gives us a literary limbo, populated with an arbitrary assortment of fictional characters embraced by the popular imagination. Hedda learns that she has been committing suicide over and over again for more that a century. She and others in this limbo survive, deathless and ever the same -- until the moment in which they disappear from living memory.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, September 29 - October 9

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presents

The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler

by Jeff Whitty

directed by David M. Long

September 29 – October 9

Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Added performance on Wednesday, October 5 at 7:30 p.m.

Mary Moody Northen Theatre

St Edward’s University, 3001 South Congress Avenue

Tickets: $18 Advance General Admission ($15 Students, Seniors, SEU Community), $20 at the door

Available through the MMNT Box Office, (512) 448-8484, Mondays - Fridays from 1- 5 p.m.

Special student discount night Friday, September 30. Student tickets $7 with ID.

The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler is recommended from mature audiences. The play contains strong language and adult situations.

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, the award-winning producing arm of the St. Edward’s University professional theatre training program, kicks off its 39^th anniversary season with the regional premiere of The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty, running September 29 – October 9, 2011.

From Tony-Award winner Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) comes a crazy theatrical exploration of an imaginary universe where fictional characters must remain so long as we remember them, doomed to repeat their actions. Hedda Gabler keeps shooting herself, and Mammy her housemaid keeps cleaning up the mess. Tired of her selfish ways, Hedda sets off in search of her author for a full makeover, taking a bizarre contingent of characters with her. Featuring Equity guests Jill Blackwood, Jarrett King and David Stokey, this production promises to leave you laughing. No knowledge of Ibsen required.

“[C]elebrates creation and creativity … in a mad invention that is as fascinating as it is funny.”

— Theatretimes.org

About Mary Moody Northen Theatre Through the Mary Moody Northen Theatre, students work alongside professional actors, directors and designers to explore all facets of theatrical production, create vibrant productions and earn points towards membership in Actor’s Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States. This program is one of only three in the country that offer Equity member candidacy within an undergraduate-only curriculum. MMNT operates under an AEA U/RTA contract and is a member of Theatre Communications Group. For more information, contact the theatre program at 512-448-8487 or visit us online at www.stedwards.edu/theatre.

Hedda Gabler (for export), Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, July 28-30,

by Michael Meigs

Austin's youngish Palindrome Theatre is on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to perform their new, 90-minute non-stop Hedda Gabler every afternoon from August 5 to 29, except for Wednesdays. Outside those office hours the six-member cast and associates will be free to immerse themselves in the largest international arts event around, now in its 74th year. Last year, for example, Edinburgh offered 2,453 different shows staging 40,254 performances by 21,148 performers in 259 venues.

That's a theatre artist's dream, but it doesn't come cheap. Artistic directors Nigel O'Hearn and Kate Eminger have raised all but about $3000 of the costs, including travel, staging costs and artists' compensation. The company is making a last push this weekend in Austin, staging the export version at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre Thursday - Saturday, July 28 - 30. You can purchase your $25 fundraiser ticket on-line at their website.

Palindrome staged O'Hearn's first reworking of Ibsen's piece in February and March at the Blue Theatre and received positive reviews from ALTcom and others. The ALT review provides links to pieces by Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle and by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com. Preparing to write this article, I discovered that Palindrome had put together a two-minute video promo featuring a key scene and several "pull quotes," including my own comment, "Robin Grace Thompson gives us a Hedda who is burning with psychic energy. She is deliberate and wicked." (Click to view the video at Vimeo.com.)

Attending a rehearsal of the export version of Hedda Gabler last week, I found a piece recrafted both by O'Hearn and by the ensemble, retaining the strong central core of Thompson as Hedda and Chase Crossno as Thea, the runaway wife who follows Hedda's former lover. Jacqueline Harper plays the servant Berthe, a role considerably strengthened. Nathan Osborn, who played the dissolute, desperate Einar Lövberg, has now assumed the role of George Tesman, Hedda's husband of six months.

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, July 28 - 30

Click to read ALT review of July 25

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PALINDROME THEATRE GOES INTERNATIONAL: HEDDA GABLER

Austin Preview at the Salvage Vanguard

July 28 - 30

of the piece to be presented at Theatre at the Fringe, Edinburgh, Scotland

Ticket Price: $25+ fundraising price

Box office Phone: 512-939-6829

Website: www.palindrometheatre.com

Co-Produced with Remarkable Arts of Edinburgh, Scotland, Palindrome has been selected to bring its new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn to the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe for a full run this August.

Palindrome will be presenting a reimagined, revised 90min version of their critically acclaimed production, with new, original overture, for 3 farewell performances only, to be followed by a reception each evening.

Featuring Robin Grace Thompson, Nathan Osburn, Chase Crossno, Jude Hickey, Nigel O’Hearn and Jackie Harper.

Hedda Gabler will be running in Edinburgh at The Hill Street Theater August 5-29, every day at 2 p.m.

Upcoming: Palindrome Theatre fundraiser to send Hedda Gabler to Edinburgh, June 22

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Austin Theatre at the Fringe, Edinburgh, Scotland Benefit

June 22, 7-10 p.m. Trailer Park Eatery

Ticket Price: $25 - Box office Phone: 512-939-6829

Website: www.palindrometheatre.com

Palindrome is hosting a benefit for its donors. Any donation of $25+ to help support Palindrome’s effort to bring Austin Theatre to the international stage and support its professional, home-grown cast and crew will receive:

-An intimate music performance by Matt Hines of The Eastern Sea & Shawn Jones and Lauryn Gould of the Lovely Sparrows!

-Nacho Bar (provided by Torchy’s Tacos)

-Discounted Drinks

-Meet and Greet with cast and crew of Hedda Gabler

-Silent Auction

Only the first 150 donors will receive tickets to benefit. All others will receive tickets to any one night of Palindrome’s Austin Production of HEDDA GABLER @ Salvage Vanguard Theater, July 28-30.

Upcoming: Hedda Gabler, Classic Theatre, San Antonio, May 12 - 29

Mr. and Mrs. George Tesman return to Norway after six months of honeymoon in Europe. In their absence family friend Judge Brack has arranged the purchase of a city mansion at great expense and furnished it lavishly. Ibsen's Hedda Gabler opens on the morning after their arrival at the new residence and a new domestic life.

Allan S. Ross designed this set with meticulous detail. The audience has the time to study the heavy furniture, carpets, framed engravings, views into three additional rooms and a barely glimpsed horizon through the windows. As one listens to a querelous duet between piano and cello, the roseate illumination brings out the reds and purples. At stage right, rear, in his own pool of light, bearded and wearing his military decorations, the late General Gabler stares serenely out from his portrait.

This is a house, not a home. Everything is in its place, according to good taste, discreet expenditure and bourgeois standards. In the action that Ibsen unfolds for us, Hedda Gabler as the new mistress of the house is guarded in her reactions to everyone in these new circumstances. Having passed the age of coquettery, she married George Tesman for lack of anything better to do; now, having involuntarily made her nest with a passing comment about this particular manor, she finds herself obliged to live in it.

Asia Ciaravino is haunting in the title role. That quiet, watchful oval face is almost unblinking, She has the unconscious beauty of a woman who little cares whether others look at her or not.

In one sense, in Hedda Gabler Ibsen wrote a great thumping melodrama and resolved all the conflicts with a couple of pistol shots. One occurs far from the house and is described for us as the Greeks used to do at the conclusions of their tragedies. The second takes place in the final moments just behind a curtain in one of those alcoves as Hedda takes her own life. That's hardly giving anything away -- although the program states that Hedda Gabler was first presented in Dublin in 2008, that's referring to this adaptation by Brian Friel for the Gate Theatre. Hedda has been putting the pistol to her head since 1891, and many spectators echo the scandalized reaction of Judge Brack: "But people just don't do things like that!"

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Hedda Gabler, Classic Theatre, San Antonio, May 12 - 29

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The Classic Theatre, San Antonio,

presents

Henrik Ibsen’s

Hedda Gabler

In a new version by Brian Friel

directed by Tony Ciaravino

May 12-29

Thurs, Fri, Sat at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.

All shows are performed at the Sterling Houston Theatre (Jump-Start Theatre) in the Blue Star Art Complex (click for map)

Call 1-800-838-3006 for reservations. www.classictheatre.org

General Audience tickets are $20.00, Seniors/Military $15.00, Students $10.00

Group rates/ Season Passes available

Hedda Gabler is a tour de force about a brilliant woman struggling for power in a man's world. This classic tale of intrigue and manipulation keeps you on the edge of your seat and the ending leaves you breathless.

The Classic Theatre of San Antonio produces classic plays of yesterday, today and tomorrow; that stimulate, celebrate and enhance the understanding of others and ourselves through the expression of universal themes.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Hedda Gabler, adapted by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre Company at the Blue Theatre, February 18 - March 13

Hedda Gabler puzzled and annoyed audiences across Europe when it was first staged in 1890 and 1891 -- pretty much the same reaction Ibsen had elicited with most of his later plays. He was 61 when he wrote this one, exasperated with the bourgeois public that went to the theatre and purchased copies of his plays.

The last lines of the play are spoken by Judge Brack, that worldly sybarite who took Hedda's husband George and her would-be lover off to an all-night stag party, then comfortably assured Hedda he was looking forward to a cozy triangle, with her at the apex. In the crashing finale after Hedda kills herself with a pistol shot to the head, Brack expostulates, "But good God! People don't do such things!"

If that's a spoiler for you, accept my apologies. The secret has been out for a long time, however, and the real question of this play is not whether Hedda is going to use that pistol, but why she's going to do it. The first audiences for the work, in Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Cristiana, the capital of Norway, had stronger reactions than Judge Brack.

Attitudes changed gradually, however. Hedda, along with Nora from A Doll's House, were eventually viewed with more sympathy, particularly as women strove against the paternalism prevalent throughout Western society.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Reading of New Text for Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, December 6

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ONE NIGHT ONLY- PUBLIC READING of

HENRIK IBSEN’S HEDDA GABLER

New adaptation by Palindrome Theatre’s Resident Playwright Nigel O’Hearn

Monday Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Hyde Park Theatr, Guadalupe & 43rd St.

Free. Donations accepted

www.palindrometheatre.com

Please join us for a preview of the first play of our second season- Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler with a new adaptation by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn- world premiere opening February 2011 at The Blue Theater.

The reading will be of the first two acts of the new material which has never before been seen in public.

Reading features Robin Grace Thompson, Chase Crossno, Bernadette Nason, Nathan Osburn, Gabe Luna, Kim Adams, and Harvey Guion (with playwright reading stage directions and scowling).

Drinks to be served, discussion to be had. Approx 2 hrs.

[image adapted from image at www.wfu.edu]