Mauckingbird's lesbian "Hedda Gabler'

Mauckingbird Theatre was launched last year by Temple professor Peter Reynolds and recent grad Lindsay Mauck as a company "committed to producing professional gay-themed theater, while also exploring classic literature." In each of its three productions so far, fulfilling that mission has meant transforming classic works into gay-themed theater.

Those who object to these literary transformations could argue that the genre already abounds in gay playwrights and plays with homosexual themes, so why tamper with familiar straight works? But in Mauckingbird's case, the key question is whether or not the introduction of gay issues into any particular play is justified by what it adds artistically.

In Mauckingbird's first two productions, this approach made sense. Mauckingbird's all-male Misanthrope nicely illustrated a mirroring of court life extending into personal lives, creating the same hierarchal power structure and consequent viciousness in relationships required of those at court. And Mauckingbird's production of Joe Calarco's Shakespeare's R & J transformed Romeo's line, "Did I love till now?" into a powerful moment of personal discovery.

An unspoken problem

But unlike those first two works, Mauckingbird's current lesbian-themed adaptation (by Caroline Kava) of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler did little to create a different feel in the play. It's merely a production of a famous play that, here, dares not speak its name.

In Ibsen's work, Hedda (Jennie Eisenhower) and the scholar George Tesman (Dito van Reigersberg) return from a honeymoon he spent searching through museums and archives, and which has left her terminally restless and longing to re-enter society. They're ill suited to each other; Hedda only married him because she had "danced herself out" with a series of suitors, and Tesman offered her comfort and respectability.

When Tesman's old colleague Eilert Lovborg (Sarah Sanford) reappears with a new book— written under a man's name so she could publish scholarly work— she threatens Tesman's impending professorship (and source of income), and reignites Hedda's passions from their earlier relationship.

Courage becomes irrelevant

In Ibsen's play, Hedda couldn't go public with her relationship with Eilert because he was a scandalous drunk; but in Mauckingbird's version, the simple explanation for Hedda's cowardice is: Society would have forbidden it. This easy interpretation undermines all of Hedda's psychological complexity and weakens the thrust of Ibsen's intent that "courage is what makes a life livable."

In Kava's adaptation, Hedda's courage or lack of it is largely irrelevant, since none of the men seems especially troubled by Eilert's lifestyle or choice of companions in any case. This production doesn't even make it clear that Eilert is romantically involved with either Hedda or her new "comrade" Thea (Jessica Dal Canton). One kiss suggests such a romance, but it can only imply so much, given our knowledge that in the late 19th-Century women lived openly together in friendship (like Emily Dickinson and Sue Gilbert). When the audience laughed at Judge Braak's line, "Is your wife satisfied?" the laughter derived from what the audience brought to the work and not vice-versa.

Spoiled-bitch histrionics

Mauckingbird's adaptation did remain largely faithful to the original script; but under Reynolds's direction, this cast acted it poorly. Eisenhower's unsympathetic spoiled-bitch overacting in the title role set the tone for most of the cast. Van Reigersberg accompanies every line with an arched eyebrow or twist of his shoulders, and Kristen O'Rourke (as the maid) hops across the stage like a rabbit, and falls in and out of an Irish brogue that's strangely out of place in Ibsen's Norway.

However, I sat up in my chair when Sanford first appeared on stage as Lovborg, decked in man's attire, her hair cropped short and standing with a bold posture. But while Sanford expressed genuine moments of anguish, she failed to carry them through in her male persona, instead aping Eisenhower's histrionics. Matthew Lorenz and Dal Canton give the only natural and unaffected performances, but Lorenz isn't smarmy enough (or old enough) for Braak's caddish manipulator, and Dal Canton's straightforward earnestness belongs in some other director's production.

Marie Anne Chiment's costumes looked wonderful on all the women, as her attention to detail tied together Hedda's scarf with a portrait-painted broach. But I'm not surprised that Hedda hated living in the villa that Tesman bought for her: I would've hated living on Cory Palmer's horribly cramped set, too.

On at least four different occasions, directors have attempted to stage Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with an all-male cast, trying to introduce homosexual themes into Albee's intentionally unflattering portrayal of hetero-marriage. Albee had his agent shut each of these productions down. A pity Ibsen isn't still alive to do the same.