Seduced by Hedda
To make boredom exciting is one of the riskiest theatrical effects. The danger is that the play will become slack and self-defeating. But, if the experiment succeeds, the audience finds itself riveted by an unknown but horribly familiar quality, a dynamic stillness which appears to have no substance at all. Richard Eyre’s Hedda Gabler pulls off this feat. There are moments during the fraught second half when a vibrant torpor settles over the stage. And the actors, mired in the stifling pettiness of their preoccupations, seem genuinely uncertain what they’re going to do next. Just like life. They stop being counterfeits and become human beings, and the play itself, that most improbable of contrivances, emerges into reality and truth.
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