Theatre
Glenda's Hedda
Kenneth Hurren
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (Aldwych Theatre) Made in Heaven by Andrew Sachs (Chichester Festival Theatre) Clarence Darrow by David W. Rintel (Piccadilly Theatre) I believe Claire Bloom played Hedda Gabler in New York a few years ago, and I should hick to have seen that. I don't know how good she was in total, but she must have been halfway up there just because she is beautiful. The actresses to whom the part has been entrusted in London in my time have not, on the whole, and whatever their other great virtues and talents, been beautiful; and we have, I fear, grown so accustomed to seeing the play with this vital element missing that our view of it has been warped.
It is an element no one mentions out loud anymore. Yet it is clear that Hedda must have been imagined by Ibsen as a stunner. God knows she has nothing else to account for the effect she has upon men, which is roughly that of a magnet on iron filings. The nature of their attraction for her, and how seriously they misjudge it, is much discussed, but her attraction for them is a matter we needs must either tactfully ignore (which is difficult, since it is vital to the play) or else regard as some strange, impenetrable mystery (which is to add a dimension of confusion that the work can very well do without). Tricky thing for reviewers to 'broach, the subject of a woman's physical attractiveness. If Cleopatra were to be personated by an actress with a humpback and a wooden leg, it might be thought proper to remark on her disabilities, but probably in a spirit of sympathy rather than complaint, and I somewhat recoil myself from breaking the traditional code of gallantry. The fact is, though, that Glenda Jackson, who plays Hedda in Trevor Nunn's production at the Aldwych, goes rather out of her way to exacerbate the difficulties. Vivacious of disposition and sunny of temper though she may be, she is not a girl who, on her pictorial aspect, would have the blades of the town lining up down the block, and she might have tried, in ,the circumstances, to soften Hedda's disagreeable personal characteristics, or at least not to emphasise them too violently. This, I'm sorry to say, is not her way. Her Hedda is an overt bitch, right down the line, with none of the beguilement that might explain why she gets away with it. She laughs like a bad drain, and her mildest shafts of sardonic humour are delivered like knives to the gut.
As a display of sustained malevolence, it has something to be said for it, though it would not, even in that respect, altogether escape a charge of monotony, and it is not, of course, Hedda Gabler. The actress and her director have some grasp of the play: they do not, I think, suppose that it is about no more than a spectacular case of boredom — as so often is supposed, probably because Ibsen is said to have written it after reading a news item about a woman who had killed herself for just that reason. In seeking some psychological credibility for his story. Ibsen came a long way from that starting point and delineated far more strikingly a neuroticism that had its roots less in Hedda's boredom than in her frigidity, her disgust with her pregnancy and her general revulsion from sex. Nunn and Miss Jackson take the point, but I cannot think that the Hedda at whom they have arrived would have had much trouble in that direction. Even that enthusiastic cicisbeo, Judge Brack (though Timothy West valiantly suggests otherwise), might have been sensationally discouraged by her demeanour.
This is not the woman for whom the desperately disorientated Lovborg shoots himself; and it is not the woman, either, for whom her husband, Tesman, is living so far beyond his means that the Tesman drawing-room (in John Napier's wondrously extravagant set) resembles the reception lounge of some magnificent fin de siecle hotel near Cannes, figured-glass french windows, oriental rugs, palm fronds and all. Peter Eyre, as Tesman, must play this rabbit to her snake without appearing to notice her reptilian qualities, which makes the part — and, by extension, the play — ridiculous beyond the limits of reasonable plausibility. Hedda Gabler pregnant? Not only is Tesman's desire unimaginable; he just wouldn't have dared.
At Chichester, an alleged comedy called Made in Heaven, to which the Festival Theatre is haplessly committed in repertory for the rest of the season, is outside the province of rational comment.
Purporting whimsically to have something to say about marriage — which I took to be that it is better to be poor and bored than rich and bored — it is a deadly, ineptly integrated blend of farce and fantasy with one witless foot in each grave. Patricia Routledge, Michael Bates and Patrick Macnee are among the hands betrayed into it.
In his one-man performance as Clarence Darrow, the American lawyer, Henry Fonda makes an impressive debut on the London stage. Both actor and advocate are discussed by Peter Cotes on page 123.
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