"I just got out of my theatre class and the teacher (Sara Morsey) went into a half hour lecture on how the Satellite is the best source for finding out about what was going on in town. She read parts of Shamrock McShane's article (The Play About the Baby – see: newmoonrising.com) and went on to say that Mr. McShane is a journalistic hero who makes his readers actually think instead of spoon feeding them their news and reviews. She strongly recommended that all her students pick it up this and every month."

– Denise Hank

Lessons in Reviewing

Hedda Gabbler

Thursday, October 10, 2002
Shamrock McShane

Who will review the reviewer?

I will.

The Gainesville Sun's review of Hedda Gabler at the Hipp has got to hurt the box office, but artistic director Lauren Caldwell claims it has not, that there is no discernible correlation between the negative review and ticket sales.

Ok. Still, it's a flat-out pan. It labels the play an incomprehensible turkey. It slams the best work in town, and that is damning by faint praise.

I think The Sun's review slams Lauren Caldwell's best work.

Caldwell's Frankenstein was merely diminished by the Sun's review; Hedda may well be destroyed. This is my fear. The artists of the Hipp feign fearlessness. They have to. But Hedda may be destroyed. The Hipp may not be able to save her. Nor I. Nor you.

If good work is treated as bad, and bad work is treated as good, a review may be seen as an inverse barometer, but only by those who know from experience to read it as such.

The effect on actors from New York must be negative. Joy Schiebel has had her best work denigrated in Gainesville. Last season Anthony Newfield had some of his best work denigrated in Gainesville. The opportunity to be reviewed in the Gainesville Sun is not a selling point to New York actors.

Buried on page 28: "Hipp's Hedda an enigma"

Perhaps you can credit Bill DeYoung with the hed, which fires no volleys. Hedda Gabler is an enigma. That is a truism.

The lead: "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones."

A cliché. Why begin a review with a cliché unless you're going to turn it on its ear? You're not out to prove a cliché, are you? The review likens the set of the play to a glass house. So who's throwing stones? The people in the play? The director? The reviewer?

"Nor should they play with pistols."

People who live in glass houses should not play with pistols. Ok. What's that got to do with the play? People in a play should not play with pistols?

"Or engage in mind games."

Wait a minute. The characters in a play should not engage in mind games? A playwright should not engage in mind games? A director? It has already stopped making sense. We go to the theater for mind games. Why should they not play mind games, whoever they are?

"They can be seen."

Isn't that the whole idea?

Now follows a wrongheaded description of the set: "Mihai Cuipe's set for Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen's classic at the Hippodrome State Theatre, suggests a large window framed in a curved valance with soft, lacy draperies hanging above flowering vines crisscrossing its panes."

That sentence is a pain. A metaphor suggests; a set is. The review misinterprets the symbolic as naturalistic detail. It is therefore fundamentally wrong from the start. But the reviewer could have discovered this simply by following the review's own reasoning which directly leads to the malformed conclusion: "The only hints we get of the fire which consumes Hedda inwardly are introductory scenes in which the actress pantomimes her anger."

The very first of these scenes shows Hedda confronting the tendrils which entangle her. I likened them to Henry James' metaphor for experience – "a huge spider web." Not exactly "flowering vines," more like snares.

Nowhere is it mentioned that George Tesman is a professor, and this in a university town. Is it a matter of no relevance?

"The setting," which the review determines to be "airy, soft and almost feminine" (begging the question of: what is feminine?) "stands in direct contrast to Hedda, the play's heroine." The question begged is then danced around endlessly until the review mercifully ends.

Now, however, it goes on: "Dressed in stark black clothing (reminiscent of the days when you could tell the bad guys from the good by the black hat he wore) Hedda is the incarnation of evil, who lacks any redeeming human virtues."

Why the parenthetical clause? This, with respect to derivations from the sentence pattern, is how a comma is used.

In regard to the clause itself, what are we to make of dressing in black? Simply sum it up as the incarnation of evil? That's not exactly what we mean by black when, say, we wear it to a funeral. What of that? What does black mean? The dark side? Simple? I don't think so. And if Hedda is evil, is it Evil with a capital E?

"She plots and manipulates those around her, hoping to find relief from the tediousness of her life."

Finally, this is what Hemingway needed to start the day: the reviewer has stumbled, and I do mean stumbled, upon One True Sentence. (Although it too is lacking a comma: Hedda "plots" actions, but "manipulates" people, so one best separate the two predicates.)

Now the review is on a roll. The next sentence is true too: "Hedda wants to feel passion, but passion eludes her, and so she seeks it by arranging to destroy other people."

There is the basis of a decent critique in those two sentences. There is a premise. But the reviewer drops the ball! Look:

"Having set the production in no particular time period, the Hippodrome's telling of the story has no rationale for Hedda's behavior. Ibsen's time frame was the late 1800s, a period when women were excluded from a lifestyle that didn't include marriage and child-bearing."

The reviewer can't determine when the play is set, therefore it is set in "no particular time period". Apparently it has not occurred to the reviewer that the play is happening now. Silly me, that was my first assumption. I am beguiled by the ever-present tense of the theater. But, then, I love theater.

Here's a novel concept that might be applied to the eternal present tense of dramatic literature: there exists that which renders classical drama timeless. Indeed, this may have something to do with the very nature of art. (I normally only point this out to novice reviewers who don't know any better.)

Either of the above propositions is tenable, or both, and they were both posited by the review itself. Alas, the reviewer ignores them both and proceeds to a conclusion at considerable variance from the review's own previous reasoning. Remember: "Hedda is the incarnation of evil who lacks any redeeming human values." Why should the incarnation of evil be confined to any particular time period? I suppose the devil may care, but I do not think he, or in this case, she, would feel much bound by it.

And what might these redeeming human values be that Hedda is supposedly without? It would seem to disregard such supposedly non-redeeming human values as Hedda's, indeed all-consuming, sensuality, a value rewarded only in sharing, and at the highest possible cost. Hedda's sensuality is omnivorous. And a turn-on.

The reviewer wishes to go back in time to Ibsen's day. She thinks she will find refuge there. "Ibsen's time frame was the late 1800s, a period when women were excluded from choosing a life style that didn't include marriage and child bearing. The woman squelched became the woman desperate to break out of the mold."

Placing Hedda at the safe distance of a hundred years ago would remove many of the questions that so trouble the reviewer. It would make her explainable, but instead, the Hipp has persisted in making Hedda an enigma. Somehow I think Ibsen, who always strove to live in the present moment, would appreciate the Hipp's view of Hedda, as opposed to the museum piece desired by the reviewer.

Why does Hedda do the things she does? The reviewer would prefer to answer: because she cannot vote, because she does not get equal pay for equal work. Then, presumably, the reviewer would be prepared to cheer Hedda on, "You go, girl," as she kills herself.

But, alas, "In the time limbo of this production, with no societal restraints, Hedda the desperate woman simply seems psychotic."

I don't think that anyone has ever "simply seemed psychotic," so this may be a first. But what the reviewer keeps forgetting is what she just said. (She may be smoking some good shit, but she should try writing poetry on it instead of reviews.) She goes on: "Joy Schiebel, who plays the evil Hedda, gives a monochromatic reading of her character." So, which is it? Is Hedda evil or simply psychotic? In consecutive sentences the reviewer tries to have it both ways?

"Over the course of the play, Schiebel acts as bored as the part she plays." The logic, you see, is turning in on itself. "She succeeds in creating a dislikable character, but fails to project the stifled passion hiding under her black costume."

I think not. I think the dislikable character being created here is the reviewer, and perhaps we can see a bit of her stifled passion emerging through the cracks.

As for Hedda's passion, how does the reviewer know it exists if Schiebel fails to project it? Where's it come from, on high?

As a playwright, I think I know. Henrik Ibsen cleverly secreted it in a coded text which we perceive as the words of the play.

What the reviewer is really saying is that she did not like Joy Schiebel's performance. Can we not intuit this none too subtle message? But why? The reviewer seems to be receiving all the play's signals clearly enough, even if she can't remember them from one moment to the next, what is it she doesn't like?

As always, we must follow her reasoning inversely.

"The play comes to life with the arrival of Hedda's former lover, Eilert Lovborg, played by Jason Marr with passion aplenty. He galvanizes the stage and physically shakes Hedda out of her remote lethargy."

"Remote lethargy" is an ill-conceived term. If one held lethargy at bay, if one's lethargy were remote, would that not take a considerable amount of energy, which would seem to be exactly what the reviewer means to espouse here?

But the larger point is that the reviewer actually likes this "passion aplenty" "physically shaking Hedda".

I rather liked it too, so we may be on to something here.

"Mark Kinkaid as Tesman, Hedda's fuddy-duddy husband, also gives an energetic performance that is both sympathetic and humorous."

See? I liked Kinkaid too. Something's clicking here. So what's the problem?

It seems to be Hedda. Hedda just won't get with the program. Hedda is what the Sun's reviewer does not like about Hedda Gabler. Hedda and Lauren Caldwell's take on Hedda.

"In a curious move, director Lauren Caldwell has cast a woman in the customarily male role of Judge Brack, who seeks a triangular arrangement with Hedda and George."

I sense the reviewer's inhibitions bubbling to the surface here. If it is a curious move, why not follow your curiosity? Are you afraid?

"A woman dressed in men's clothing seeking sexual favors from Hedda begs the question. Why?"

Good God, why not?

I'll tell you what the Sun's reviewer is avoiding here, and avoiding it from the get-go: Hedda Gabler, Joy's Schiebel's Hedda, Lauren Caldwell's Hedda is hot. Really hot. Everybody is hot for her. Everybody.

Did the Sun's reviewer happen to mention that Schiebel gets NAKED.

Oh, she left that salient fact out. I just happen to remember it myself. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with her?

There are the bare facts. Schiebel's Hedda puts the moves on the petite and delectable Dana Panepinto. She opens her mouth to Judge Brack's kiss. She locks her legs around her lover and invites him to love her to death. Did the Sun's review leave that out?

"As the play winds down to its self-destructive conclusion, audiences seem more befuddled than emotionally spent."

I think the reviewer has just been befuddled by her own emotions.

Audiences? Plural? Did she see the play more than once? Or is she merely adopting the mantle of the masses? I think it suits her. Like the masses she is superficial, hypocritical, forgetful, frightened, and downright silly.