Mauckingbird Theatre Company presents Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, in a new adaptation by Caroline Kava. Peter Reynolds directs.
This adaptation explores lesbian relationships and the search for personal and sexual identity while exposing class divides, sexism, and the influence of money and status in aristocratic and bourgeois worlds.
Rising scholar George Tesman has just married the beautiful, dangerously intelligent and much desired Hedda Gabler. The newlyweds’ lives are thrown into disarray and their livelihood is threatened with the unexpected return of Miss Eilert Lovborg, Tesman’s rival and Hedda’s true love. Hedda becomes consumed with jealousy as she watches Lovborg live her life with abandon, dressing in men’s clothes and openly seeing other women. Dissatisfied with conventional life and trapped in an unfulfilling marriage, Hedda wrestles with her own desires while manipulating those around her in a cruel game. As the dramatic interpretation unfolds and tensions rise, Hedda’s world begins to self-destruct in Ibsen’s classic exploration of the moral faults of modern society.