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Friday, July 26, 2002

By Anna Rosenstein

Hedda Gabler is perennially fascinating.

	'Hedda Gabler' WHERE: The Summer Company at Peter Mills Theatre, Duquesne University campus. WHEN: 8 tonight; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. TICKETS: $12, $10 seniors; 412-396-4997.

Tortured and cunning, she's really Nora's dark sister. In fact, nearly every character in "Hedda Gabler" had its safer counterpart in the earlier "A Doll House." It's as if Ibsen, after a decade of mulling it over, decided Nora has a lot more to worry about than social inequity. Both women suffer from being born at the wrong time, but Hedda blazes with a modern angst that cries out for a rock 'n' roll remedy. She needs Jim Morrison or, better yet, a little Jefferson Airplane or Velvet Underground to take the edge off.

Instead, she languishes, her slow death by boredom and self-hatred cut short by a gunshot. The play undulates on the waves of her desires, frustrations and disappointments. Her schemes crash like angry waves. Her temper flares and ebbs like the tides. Oceanic, her character is vast, uncontrollable, life-sustaining, death-inducing and beautiful and frightening beyond words.

Hedda has a psychological depth that actors love. The play hints at sexual dysfunction and parental manipulation, but the details are murky. Is Hedda a victim or victimizer? A good production explores the many possibilities, makes choices, embraces the discrepancies of a complex mind.

That's where the Summer Company falls short. I don't sense that director John E. Lane Jr. has delved very deeply into the text. Each character is decidedly one note.

Hedda, especially, played by Kim Zelonis, suffers from a shallow interpretation. Zelonis nicely captures Hedda's dissatisfaction but to such an extreme that there's little shading and few moments of vibrancy. From her first appearance, she is sulky and shrewish. She purses her lips and pouts. She's petty, childish and wicked. Other elements that make Hedda so intriguing fall by the wayside. We don't get to see that she's also charming, dynamic and terribly fearful.

Daniel Brown's Tesman, Hedda's annoying husband, is almost cartoonish in his ineffectuality. He's timid and mincing and Brown moves oddly from his elbows only, giving Tesman a rodent-like quality. It's easy to see why Hedda can't stand him, but he's so weak and simpering that I can't imagine him causing more trouble than a pesky mosquito.

More problematic is that Brian Ceponis' Lovborg, the failed but fiery genius who threatens the Tesmans' way of life on so many levels -- social, intellectual, sexual -- is equally pathetic. Ceponis makes Lovborg placid and frail, not in a way that suggests sustained decadence or soul-weariness, but as if he has no spirit and no capacity to understand his surroundings.

Set against these two, Art DeConciliis' Judge Brack is almost too fiery. He brings a danger to the role that's exciting, so much so that one might think Hedda would be overwhelmed by his flame compared to the other wet rags around her.

And that's a problem. These skewed performances upset all the subtle maneuverings of power that make "Hedda Gabler" fascinating. At times, Hedda should be virtually defenseless in the maelstrom created by this triangle of men. She can also cunningly control each of them.

As if Lane felt that to strengthen Hedda, he had to weaken everyone around her, the other women are mousy, especially Juliette Mariani's Mrs. Elvsted. Her personal anguish is swallowed by her unceasing fear of Hedda.

Lane's chosen a smooth translation by Rick Davis and CMU professor Brian Johnston. His set is just stuffy enough to indicate the suffocating world of bourgeois parlor life. The one unfortunate concession to the Peter Mills' small stage is the lack of an onstage piano, losing that constant reminder of Hedda's stifled and stagnant creativity.

It's almost a symbol of all that's missing from the production. "Hedda Gabler" can't be so drastically pared down without losing its richness.