In the theatre business Ben Brantley is not known for his love of women playwrights and plays about women. But nobody can really say anything (out loud and publicly) because theatre is so dependent on the NY Times review more than any other industry. Films have inoculated themselves against bad reviews by not inviting critics in advance to films that probably wouldn’t get good reviews, but anyone who knows NY theatre knows that the Times review could make or break your show and your career. It’s way too much power for one person to have and Ben Brantley had held that power for over a decade.
I don’t usually read reviews but I came across his review of the revival Hedda Gabler one of the great Ibsen plays written in 1890 starring Mary Louise Parker and I was stunned by the vitriol in comparing that production with the film Twilight. Twilight and Hedda Gabler. Big. Nasty. Stretch.
That affectless, amateurish acting I’d been seeing onstage, with its flat-line readings and saggy pauses, was all in the name of creating the illusion of people already dead. Could it be that this “Hedda Gabler” had fallen under the spell of “Twilight,” the hit movie from fall about the price of loving for teenage vampires?
I mean, think about it. The forever fresh-faced Ms. Parker, one of our most delightful actresses, has traded in her usual air of easy, quirky spontaneity for the robotic petulance of an I-hate-everybody adolescent in a yearlong sulk. With her hair darkened, her face ghostly pale and her frame skeletal thin, her Hedda brings to mind a valley girl who’s given up cheerleading to be a goth because it’s way cooler and it matches the place her mind’s at now.
Seen in this context, even the bizarre visual that opens the play — Hedda lying on a couch, her skirt hiked up and her seemingly bare derrière on view — fits into place. Hedda is mooning us. Now that’s really showing your contempt for the bourgeoisie. And of course this vampire housewife, unlike the frigid Heddas of the past, is quite amenable to sexual activity on the sly. Hey, she lets her old flame, Ejlert Lovborg (Paul Sparks), get all the way to third base while her husband’s in the other room. That Mr. Sparks plays the brilliant, decadent Ejlert with the inflections of a ticked-off surfer dude only feeds into the whole “Twilight” effect.
All right. I give up. That’s as far as I can go with the “Twilight” theory.
This whole review gives me the creeps. Where’s his editor? I know that the Times is very careful about not putting any pressure on its reviewers, but give me a break, do reviews really have to be so mean? Does he get pleasure in this? I’m not saying you have to like everything or even look for the goo in something you don’t like. Not everything is good and worthy of being on Broadway. But this is Hedda Gabler. This play is a known quantity. Personally, I think there should be a term limit on critics. Brantley has been the Times lead theatre critic since 1996. Enough.
Some good news to report is that Elisabeth Vincentelli the arts and entertainment editor at Time Out NY has been appointed chief drama critic at the NY Post taking over from Clive Barnes who passed away last year. Hopefully it will make a difference to have another woman’s voice on the beat. (Linda Winer is the lead critic for Newsday) She starts at the Post on March 1. It’s interesting to note that Vicentelli had a different perspective from Brantley on Hedda Gabler posting on her blog:
Hedda Gabler, on the other hand, is getting a bum rap. It’s far from being as disastrous as some would have it, and Mary-Louise Parker actually gives an interesting, far from obvious performance.
Let’s hear it for a diversity of voices and perspectives.
sounds like someone can use a real good dick punching!!!!!!!
To begin with – this sounds like an awfully provocative interpretation of the play by the director – going for the implied sexuality of Ibsen’s text. Coincidentally I just taught this play to my students today & we talked about this issue.
I can’t help but wonder if the provocative nature of the production planted the seed in Brantley’s mind that such a revew was appropriate in tone. Not that this is any excuse.
His is a shamelessly sexist review of this actresses performance. I absolutely loathe reviewers who seem to take perverse pleasure in ripping someone to shreds. Completely inappropriate. This is what gives “reviewing” versus “critiquing’ a bad name. Art criticism is meant to evaluate with the spirit of contexualizing the piece of art – its pros & cons – with a spirit of learnig from the experience for the sake of assisting the art form to grow & move forward. Brantley fails in this miserably.
After reading this post, I took out my Portable Dorothy Parker and read her review of Hedda Gabler in the June 1918 issue of Vanity Fair. This is what she had to say – “I know all those things that the critics said about Nazimova’s performance of Hedda Gabler, but I can’t help it – I thought she was great. I know she was weird, and morbid, and exaggerated, and neurasthenic, and full of poses, and ll those other things they called her, but that is my notion of the way she should have been. Somehow, I never could seem to picture Hedda Tesman as belonging to the Susanna Cocroft type.” Looks like Mrs Parker would disagree with Brantley, and Parker always wins.
Yikes. I just experienced my own little taste of sexism in Hollywood today. Some guy reviewed my comedy series, Couch Cases, and rather than praising our storytelling or the production value of the show, like he has with shows created by and starring men, he basically said he couldn’t take the lead character seriously because she has breasts. Honestly, it’s my first time being the object of such an offensive (not to mention irrelevant) comment. I am literally laughing for lack of knowing what else to do!
http://www.tilzy.tv/socially-impaired-therapist-seeks-man-in-couch-cases.htm
Sorry. Ben Brantley’s review really nailed most of what’s wrong with this dreadful revival of a marvelous play. The acting was amateurish, in fact a trio of older ladies were behind me on the street after the performance and they said is was a “shame,” and just like a “high school play.” Clueless direction was no help, either. There is absolutely nothing in the text to back up the supposedly sexual nature of the Hedda/Eilert relationship. Read the play. In 99% of the translations, Hedda talks about forcing detailed confessions out of Lovborg.
All of the actors (except Auntie Julie) were solidly in the here and now. But for the costumes, it could have been 2009. Ms. Parker’s Hedda was excruciatingly bad. Her flat affect never changed. What made her think she could begin to understand what Ibsen had in mind? I hope she never gets the opportunity to murder any more of his plays. Let these gunshots rest their case.