Miss Halfway

Hedda Gabler

by David Anthony Fox

Jill McCorkel GIRLS, INTERRUPTED: Caroline Kava's lesbian adaptation of Hedda Gabler, starring Jennie Eisenhower (left) in the title role, isn't funny enough for parody, and miles away from thoughtful seriousness. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Poor Hedda Gabler. First, her adored father, a glamorous general, dies, leaving her with little more than a pair of dueling pistols. Embarking on a social tailspin, Hedda finds herself involved with the brilliant but self-destructive, alcoholic, needy wonderboy Eilert Lovborg; and with the creepy, leering, position-is-everything Judge Brack. Finally, Hedda marries George Tesman, a pathetic, second-rate academic, whose work is completely dwarfed by Lovborg's. In Henrik Ibsen's perceptive melodrama, Hedda learns a universal truth: All men are complete disappointments.

But Hedda's real tragedy is that she's more conventional than she wants to be. These wretched men in their different ways are still in control of her mind and heart. Hedda may be bossy and angry, the Bitch of the Baltic — but one thing she is not is a lesbian.

Yet that's the fatal gimmick in playwright Caroline Kava's otherwise quite conventional adaptation of Hedda Gabler. It's Miss Eilert Lovborg here, and she's kind of a George Sand wannabe. And it turns Hedda, a complex character full of mixed emotions and one of drama's first modern women, into a distressing one-note cliché: a frustrated dyke.

The mysteries multiply in Mauckingbird's production. There are funny moments even in serious productions of Hedda; and there have been famously campy productions, often with a drag performer in the title role (Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch did it to perfection). But most of the time, I can't tell if director Peter Reynolds is trying for earnestness or camp. Virtually everybody in the ensemble twitches, grimaces and shouts. Dito van Reigersberg (as George Tesman) gets laughs on every entrance, though I can't figure out why. (Maybe van Reigersberg is now himself a Philadelphia camp artifact.) In Act 1, the pace is relentlessly fast, more suitable for a Feydeau farce.

But Act 2 mellows a little. The actors take more time, and there are some touching moments. (Mauckingbird may have given us the only Hedda Gabler ever where the show is stolen by the actress playing old Aunt Juliana: Cheryl Williams is lovely and natural and a benchmark for what could and should have been.)

Whatever the intention here, it fails. This Hedda isn't funny enough for parody, and miles away from thoughtful seriousness. Costumes (by Marie Anne Chiment) are sumptuous, and set designer Cory Palmer has taken the tiny Second Stage space and turned it into a veritable (ahem) dollhouse. But it's not enough. Mauckingbird's Hedda proves that halfway between hilarity and depth lies only tedium.

(d_fox@citypaper.net)

Hedda Gabler | Through Jan. 29, Mauckingbird Theatre Company at Second Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-923-8909, mauckingbirdtheatreco.org