HEDDA GABLER Reviews

Bumping in Progress.

The Associated Press - NEGATIVE

The problems start with Mary-Louise Parker's hyper-neurotic performance of the title character. The actress is feverishly upset from the get-go, giving her little room to ratchet up the resentment over the course of the play, which opened Sunday at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre.

Though Parker looks sensational in designer Ann Roth's fetching dresses and usually is adept at portraying little-girl-lost desperation, she delivers an idiosyncratic, yet one-note portrait of self-absorption, a woman not caring whom she hurts. Hedda's observations are often cruel, sneering, for example, at the scholarly ruminations of Tesman, her good-natured husband, played by Michael Cerveris with an excess of moist sincerity.


AP

Updated On: 1/25/09 at 07:25 PM

"moist sincerity" ????????????????

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The "moistness" or the "sincerity"?

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Both! Sort of teary and phlegm-y at the same time, like there's always a catch at the back of his throat. Yeah, the article phrased it in a really clumsy, awkward sort of way, but I think I know what they're trying to get at.

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Or some "Deep Throat"-esque artistic porno...

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Updated On: 1/25/09 at 08:45 PM

I'm laughing out loud imagining a sort of cross between Gay Men's Chorus and a wet t-shirt contest... starring Michael Cerveris.

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Cerveris plays more effectively against type, damping down his charisma and menace to play a ponderous, fawning dolt
There's another 'wet' word to describe MC again...

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USA Today - ** out of ****

There was reason to expect more from Mary-Louise Parker, the latest A-list actress to tackle a character who, like Macbeth or Mama Rose, seems destined to pop up on Broadway every few years. But Parker's intelligence and range are wasted on this performance, which reduces Hedda to a petulant, if glamorous, brat.
USA Today

Backstage is NEGATIVE:

"While it's great fun to watch Mary-Louise Parker chew the scenery like an intergalactic villainess on an episode of Doctor Who in the Roundabout Theatre Company revival of Hedda Gabler, Ian Rickson's overheated production does not deliver Ibsen's intent: to portray a huge-spirited woman perverted by the provincialism of her time. As he did with his recent production of The Seagull, a hit in London and New York, Rickson has dusted off a familiar classic, sexed it up, and given his leading lady the opportunity to grab the spotlight with a flashy performance. Though Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull added humor, joy, childishness, charm, and narcissism to Arkadina, Parker's Hedda is like Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond plopped down in 19th-century Norway. Don't get me wrong: Parker is one of our finest actors, and there are moments of passionate fire in her portrayal. But she is altogether too contemporary for this role, and she's been directed to pitch herself to the edge of high camp."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003934184

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Updated On: 1/25/09 at 09:51 PM

Aaaaaahhhhhhh...

Ben Brantley: "I would so love to be able to make a case — any case — for this “Hedda Gabler.” I have only deep admiration for many of those involved in this whacked-out rendering of Ibsen’s landmark portrait of a woman suffocated by societal constraints and her own neuroses. (Yes, that is what the play’s about, but it’s not relevant to what we’re discussing here.) The director of this “Hedda” is Ian Rickson, who this season delivered a nigh-perfect “Seagull” on Broadway, one of the best revivals I have ever, ever seen. That he is now responsible for one of the worst revivals I have ever, ever seen has me flummoxed. Mr. Rickson’s “Seagull” was a fluidly integrated production in which everyone seemed to exist in the same moment and in the same universe. With this “Hedda” it’s not just that everyone is bad. It’s that they’re all bad in their own, different ways."

(link to come)

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Ouch. Big ouch.