Word: hedda
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...titular Hedda (Rebecca J. Levy ’06) is a passionate hellion whose life as a new wife is studded with geniuses, bores and powermongers. There is her husband (Daniel J. Wilner ’07), an eager lunkhead academic; his delicate aunt (Megan E.M. Low ’04); a former schoolmate of Hedda’s (Mary E. Birnbaum ’07); and a primly lecherous judge (Jess R. Burkle ’06). These figures spend the first half of the play manipulating each other to the extent their respective brain sizes permit, with Hedda?...
Then, just before intermission, a catalytic gale blows in a tousled malcontent called Lovborg (John C. Dewis). He’s brilliant, he’s wry and he’s long been nursing a passion for Hedda. And when he and Hedda butt heads, they touch off a string of events with uniformly tragic consequences...
...that Dewis’ performance is as good as Levy’s is ill-conceived. Her performance is hot-blooded, alert, thoroughly aware—and eminently unbelievable. Levy isn’t untalented, because her blue-moon moments of credibility here are clearly instinctual. But her Hedda is recklessly artificial and horribly overplanned. For a while, I thought that her cartoonishness might have been the point of her performance; but, in truth, many of her Harvard turns (most egregiously in The Waverly Gallery and Chess, but even in minor twaddle like Ivory Towers) have suffered from the same...
...Melissa E. Goldman ’06 and the deliberate lighting by Kelzie E. Beebe ’04. John T. Drake ’06 contributes a punchy sound design which includes a mix of innovative music cues, many of which conjure images of the dance-loving Hedda at a modern-day rave...
...text—a text which smugly chides us for thinking that it could end in joy. Donahue’s choices are original and appropriate, and he’s wrung fine work from the bulk of his cast and crew. I couldn’t say that Hedda Gabler’s a must-see during these final high-intensity weeks of class, but it’s not a play to turn down, either; this cast and crew is worth encouraging...