Thoughts on “The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler”
Wednesday night(ed: hangover post from our week in Ashland 6/23 - 6/30), we saw a clever play called The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, by Jeff Whitty. The setup is that Ibsen’s heroine awakes after the end of the play (which ends with her shooting herself) to find herself again a resident of the Cul-De-Sac of the Tragic Heroines, to which they apparently decamp between performances of their characters’ plays. Close neighbor and good buddy Medea bounces in, full of sympathetic banter. They are soon joined by Mammy (of Gone With The Wind), who doesn’t at first apprehension seem to be a tragic character, but shares a certain disgruntlement with the other two. She also is Hedda’s servant, a circumstance that has tragic implications.
The disgruntlement these characters share is that they are dissatisfied with their characters, and would kill (themselves or others) to get them re-written. Medea hates the fear in her kids’ eyes as she tries to be an ordinary mom in the Cul-de-Sac, Hedda would like to be happy for a change and shed her dweeb husband, and Mammy hates being an anachronism, a fact that is limned out when the black female police detective from Law and Order makes an appearance and derides her.
They hear that they might find a remedy if they make a trek to the Fiery Furnace of Creation. Hedda and Mammy make plans to make the trip; Medea, being older and a little more inured to the cycle, demurs. One of the funny scenes is when Medea stumbles onto the stage fresh from a performance, soaked in blood, and says, “I did it again. I feel just awful!”
The play then follows Hedda and Mammy on their trek, and it becomes a hilarious cross between The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy skips by once in the background, ruby slippers aglow) and a Crosby/Hope Road movie. Along the way, they meet Cassandra (and of course don’t believe a word she says), Tosca drops out of the sky and crashes to the stage two different times and a feathery hulk named Icarus also crashes resoundingly. They meet two more characters of Mammy’s “anachronism” (as opposed to “tragic”) ilk, gay refugees from something very like Boys in the Band, who are angst-ridden that modern gay men disdain their queenly ways.
Upon reaching the Fiery Furnace, they observe characters spewing forth from its maw that live briefly, then fall dead. They are informed that such is the fate of the badly-written and/or well-written but unmemorable characters. Oblivious to the implications this may have to their various quests, they plunge into the Fiery Furnace to mind-wrestle with their authors.
The two Boys exit the Furnace basically unchanged. Seems they got sidetracked by a happy hour of some sort and forgot to get themselves re-written. Mammy and Hedda, however, emerge with their wishes granted. And soon start to feel a little…wan…no, downright sick.
I guess it’s a message on two levels; as individuals,we can become obsessed with perceived flaws both physical and in our personalities. To the extent that we suppress them and cleave towards “normality”, we become less interesting and imperil our spirits.
On the artistic level, a work of art achieves greatness because it causes us to experience an extended level of humanity, either by happy example or tragic. To pluck out the components that disturb us in such a work would dilute its effect by obviating that cognitive stretching that great works of art compel us to do, excising what makes it memorable for us.
It was funny just reading about the premise.
For the sake of argument on the two levels–with individuals, such induration is also an urging on to madness. With art, it’s urging everyone to make independent films.
That said, I will see this play.