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Regional Reviews: St. Louis The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler Also see Richard's review of This Is Not Funny
But even as the stage is strewn with one comical theatrical nightmare after another (director Suki Peters), the whole thing still hangs together beautifully. Credit for that goes to the ferocious mind and relentless spirit of this Hedda, played by Emily Baker. It doesn't hurt, either, that Jeanitta Perkins is on hand as Mammy, the faithful slave from "Gone With The Wind," who's somehow found her way from page to stage (not to mention from Georgia to Norway). Ms. Perkins was haunting in The First Lady Suite a year ago, as Marian Anderson, and here she easily manages to add gravitas to the housework (even when she's just Swiffering the Tesmans' flat). Each woman realizes she's trapped in her identity, one reliving a suicide night after night; the other being despised as a stereotype in the eyes of most of the other blacks she meets in this land of unforgettable characters. So Hedda and Mammy set out on a quest, calling to mind Dante's "Divine Comedy," or perhaps the updated version by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle ("Inferno", 1976). And they seek a legendary crucible, or "furnace" where they might attempt to contact Henrik Ibsen and Margaret Mitchell about changing their existential fates. You can't blame them—two women of indomitable self-determination: one a plotting, manipulative sociopath, destroyed by getting her own way too many times; and the other, brought from a life of servitude (once again) to serve a manipulative sociopath ... So at least you know that together they'll be perfect traveling companions. There are just so many beautiful little "beats" in Ms. Baker's performance, like pearls on a string, that the a possible descent into gimmickry is never, ever broached, in this staging of Jeff Whitty's 2012 script. Yes, Lindsay Gingrich is a great, comical Medea: re-living her own jealousy and rage again and again, hilarious and operatic. And Carl Overly, Jr. and Maxwell Knocke are both giggling, delightful messes as a pair of dizzy queens from the 1968 drama The Boys in the Band, wondering at a world that's left them behind. You could easily lose sight of the dramatic underpinnings of The Further Adventures ... anywhere along the way, if it weren't for the sheer willpower and conviction and detail provided by Ms. Baker, and by Ms. Perkins, and by their director. Ms. Baker still gets plenty of laughs, especially when she starts jonesing for one of her father's antique pistols all over again, and Ms. Perkins is strangely believable, even when she gets re-written as someone entirely different from the Mammy we all remember from the 1939 movie. But after their changes, they are no longer "unforgettable," and must face an altogether new problem. Patience Davis is fun as a sort of "Cleopatra Jones" character, among others, needling Mammy into a reexamination of her literary existence. But what really strikes me is how Dave Cooperstein and Ben Ritchie (as Tesman and Lovborg) have each found themselves a perfect home in this meta-play. Both men have such very particular talents that I must heave a huge sigh of relief to find them being put to such good use by director Peters. Mr. Cooperstein, a natural absurdist who usually gets cast in light comedy, puts a big "snap!" in the first moment of this dark, strangely riotous play: as Tesman, he gently admonishes Hedda for blowing her brains out yet again, just after lights-up. Later, his endless patience with a high-strung wife seems to retrofit Ibsen's original 1890 work (and its anti-heroine) with a whole new dimension of compulsive behaviors. Mr. Ritchie, one of the most down to earth actors in town, is perfect as Hedda's unmovable ex-lover, whom we finally see posed at the mouth of the furnace. His appearance in another scene, as the leader of a half-dozen or so Jesuses, is jarringly realistic, too—as befits the style of the actor. The whole thing peels back layer after layer of pop culture, examining how memorable characters mysteriously accommodate our psychological needs, on stage, TV, and in novels. It's all very funny, in some very revealing ways. Through August 9, 2015, at the prettiest little theater in town, the Ivory, 7620 Michigan Ave., St. Louis, MO 63111. For more information visit www.stlshakespeare.org. Cast Artistic and Technical Personnel
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