Imagine, if you will, Zoe Lucker being cast as Hedda Gabler, on the condition that she plays the role in exactly the same style that she adopts for her star turn as Tanya Tucker in Footballers' Wives. Here, for those of you sadly unfamiliar with this series, is Zoe as Tanya, to give you a good visual image of what Hedda would look like while struggling with the existential dilemma Ibsen presents to her:
If this still doesn't help, try imagining Linda Gray playing Hedda in the style of Sue Ellen Ewing from Dallas. Or Joan Collins portraying her a la Alexis Colby Carrington Dexter from Dynasty. We all on the same page? Great.
So that's how Cate Blanchett chose to play Hedda Gabler for her recent turn in the role at the Brooklyn Academy of Music: as if she were starring in a kitschy soap opera. Head-tossing. Eye-rolling. Significant stares into the distance. Flouncing. Cushion-throwing. Flower-chucking. Scene-stealing. Oh my God, the scene-stealing. Anyone seen Being Julia, where Annette Bening, as a leading actress who has just discovered that her young co-star is shagging both her lover and her husband, takes over and wipes the floor with the poor girl, knocking her about and humiliating her in a frankly vulgar, over-the-top display of star power?
Blanchett was like that, only worse. She stood downstage, stage centre, when other people had dialogue and she didn't, and diverted attention to herself by grimacing at the audience, throwing her head around and, on one occasion, actually clinking a glass with her fingernail repeatedly so no-one could look anywhere but at her. She was dressed in an ahistoric series of sweeping silk button-front robes, very flattering to her extremely lean, long body. But… Hedda is clearly indicated as being pregnant in the text. People comment repeatedly on how much more rounded and ripe her figure is since her return from her honeymoon. If Blanchett understandably didn't want to put on weight for the part, she should have worn a more historically-appropriate outfit, which would have made her thinness much less noticeable. And she shouldn't have been acting next to a woman with a perfectly normal figure -- the unfortunate actress playing Thea -- who was dressed up in the most unflattering, padded, bulky dress imaginable, and whose hair was teased up into the kind of Afro that would have been inconceivable for the period in which Hedda Gabler is set. To wit:
I'm afraid that this, like the scene-stealing, was so egregious that it smacks of Blanchett, as the leading lady, deliberately wanting her competition -- in the play, and onstage -- to look as ugly and freakish as possible. And having the clout to make that happen. She actually sinks her hands into the poor cow's Afro at one point, wrestles her to the ground, and sits on top of her! It was like watching a dogfight, only, mercifully, omitting the part where Hedda lowers her jaws and rips out Thea's throat.
I can't blame Blanchett's over-acting and repeated upstaging of other actors on the direction; it was clear from the production that she had been allowed to run riot. Apparently, at a pre-performance interview with the director and the adaptor, Andrew Upton (Mr Cate Blanchett, btw), the director blithely admitted to blocking the play around whatever moves his star was making. My boyfriend, who was present at the interview, reports the director as saying something along the lines of "Cate strode all over the stage and I basically got the rest of the actors to follow along with where she decided to go". The hysteria, over-theatricality and mugging for cheap laughs were classic signs of an actor over whom no directorial control was exercised; it was as if a 17-year-old schoolgirl, playing Hedda, had found that she could get laughs by playing to the audience, and, in over her head and panicking, had decided to rely on that strategy.
There's not much to say about the other actors, because Blanchett's appalling example rubbed off on most of them; in order to have any notice taken of them at all, they exaggerated and coarsened their performances. Hugo Weaving, as Judge Brack, was the only one strong enough (one imagines his own extremely successful screen career gave him enough confidence) to resist the pressure to overdo it. Lovely voice, lovely stage presence, a very nice job (apart from a grab at Hedda's right tit in the last scene, a typically vulgar touch from an extremely vulgar production). And talking of vulgar: for those unfamiliar with the play, Judge Brack, who wants to have an affair with Hedda, is continually dropping into her house uninvited, by the back door -- an Ibsenian symbol for the kind of relationship he wants to have with her. It's neatly set-up and referred to in the play, and certainly doesn't need any more underlining.
So what did Andrew Upton do with this, in his new version of the play? He achieved the previously unimagined feat of shoehorning repeated anal sex references into Ibsen. Oh yes. Hugo Weaving had to keep making comments along the lines of, "Here I am, Hedda, coming in by your back passage again! This is my special entrance! I like it in here!" Hedda herself calls it the "Brack Passage" at a later stage. Every time that happened, I could see heads all over the auditorium turning to their companions in shock, unable to believe what we were hearing. The sheer vulgarity was underlined still further when, Hedda, about to shoot herself to avoid being blackmailed by Brack into letting him, uh, come in by her back passage, shouts loudly: "You want to be the only cock in my run!" and puts the gun to her head.
Hedda's suicide, by the way, is written to be played offstage. That's the point. It's the buildup, the waiting for the gunshot, the tension between the audience's knowledge of what she's about to do, and the onstage characters' ignorance, that makes the moment so powerful. But Blanchett wants every moment in the spotlight that she can possibly secure; this Hedda has an enormous great light shining on her as she reclines on a chaise-longue and puts the gun to her head.
I would love to believe that Blanchett, subconsciously aware of the horrendous damage she had done to one of the great theatrical dramas of all time, decided to give the audience some minimal satisfaction and catharsis by at least allowing us to watch her top herself. But sadly, there wasn't enough self-awareness in her performance to allow me to treasure that thought for any longer than a brief, fleeting moment.
Wikipedia attributes the following quote to Blanchett: "If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously." Great quote. Appalling execution. There was nothing glorious about this failure. No bravery. No pushing herself. No risk. Nothing but relying on her talent, her beauty, her exquisite voice, and using them all to deliver a travesty. I have a tremendous admiration for Blanchett as a film actress. But Lord, it's depressing to see what happens to her when she's given full rein. I've never seen such selfish acting in my entire life.
inconceivable for the period in which Hedda Gabler is set. To wit: