Fiona Reid as The Female Hamlet
Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is Reborn at the Shaw in 1991
TV's King of Kensington star was a powerhouse as Hedda Gabler - a daring interpretation of this Ibsen classic directed and adapted for the stage by Judith Thompson
Canadian playwright Judith Thompson took the famed Norwegian playwright's tragedy Hedda Gabler and transformed the text and sensibilities to modern-day language – spare and simple, bold and electrifying, so its feminist heroine could shine. Like it or hate it, audiences sat up and noticed.
Though her married name was Tesman, Ibsen gave Hedda her maiden name, Gabler, to show her independence and feistiness in this 19th-century drama. Hedda is highly intelligent, arrogant, selfish, passionate, impulsive, demanding and driven.
The premise is timeless. Old flame / soulmate (Ejlert Löveborg– “the man with vine leaves in his hair”) has come back to town. Hedda has just returned from her honeymoon, now married to academic George Tesman. She is bored silly with her conventional life – tied down to a bookish man who wants her mostly to assist him in his work.
Hedda craves danger, lust and passion. Triviality to her is a death knell. But as the walls of her self-imposed gilded cage are closing in, through the return of Löveborg, she sees a ray of hope.
As Gabler, Fiona Reid is on stage the entire time. It is one of theatre's most intoxicating and demanding roles for an actress, this Henrik Ibsen high drama often called The Female Hamlet.
As time passes an actor's interpretation of roles will change with life experiences but in 1991 Fiona Reid had this to say about playing the role of Hedda Gabler.
How do you see Hedda Gabler? Do you agree with the director Judith Thompson’s notes that Hedda may have been betrayed by her father? She seemed to looking for something in all the men she knew.
"We decided to agree on that point before rehearsals started. I don’t know if it is necessary to accept that to understand the play. My fear about accepting that wholesale is that I wouldn’t want that to blur any of the other colours that Ibsen has so clearly created in the play. Hedda is a woman full of life and full of possibilities and unable to requite it in that present situation. Her husband is involved in his books and basically wants a wife who is an extension of himself and his work and she just becomes smothered by all of those around her and she cannot adapt."
Do you think Hedda likes to make men suffer?
“I don’t think she appreciates the consequences of things when she does them. I think that very often she is testing them to see how far she can go. I don’t think she is an inherently cruel person. The fascinating thing about Judith’s [Thompson] analysis of her childhood is that it does make sense. People who have had any kind of abusive childhood do have this perfectionism and desire to control so her behaviour is consistent with that type of personality. Ibsen cements the idea that there’s something to do with Hedda's father that makes her present circumstances more difficult to tolerate. She says to Judge Brack “the General would have approved, don’t you think.” It’s still important for Hedda to have her father’s approval. So clearly Ibsen has put in there some kind of heritage from the father that colours everything that she does.”
In Part Two of this continuing series, Fiona Reid delves deeper into Ibsen's fascinating protagonist.
