Play Review: The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty, directed by Bill Rauch.

[juushika]

The second play that we saw in this short trip to Ashland was one that I knew nothing about but the author before seeing it: The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler. The playwright, Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q), is a cousin of a family friend. In all else the play was foreign to me. OSF is only the second theatre to show this play, and it is largely undiscovered. We saw a matinée on a Friday with a much quieter crowd—and I loved it. The premise is meta-tastic and somewhat absurd: after committing suicide at the end of her play, heroine Hedda Gabler awakes to find herself trapped in the fictional character's afterlife, condemned to repeat the life of her play until her story dies, and she sets out find herself a new ending.

(Picture at right is by Kim Budd and copyright the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It features Medea "doing it again", Hedda in the middle, and at right slave Mammy.)

The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty, directed by Bill Rauch, Angus Bowner Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2008.

Isben's play Hedda Gabler ends when the heroine retreats to a back room and shoots herself in the temple. So beings The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler—except that after shooting herself, Hedda awakes to find herself on the bloodied couch, not dead. She soon learns, through her good friend Medea, that she is trapped in the fictional character's afterlife. Like all the other fictional characters, Hedda is constrained to her person and personality from the play, constantly repeating her suicide (and each time erasing all memory of her afterlife), and will be stuck doing the same thing until her play is forgotten and her character dies. Not content with this fate, and determined either to rewrite her story or to find a way to kill herself for good this time, Hedda sets out to discover the Furnace, the source of all fictional creation. Her sl—I mean servant, Mammy, (a slave who wants to be a slave) accompanies her, hoping to discover more Mammys or else what other sort of black woman she could be. They encounter dozens of other fictional characters, some cameos, some companions (including a pair of self-hating gay stereotypes) on their journey.

Further Adventures is no easy play to sum up, and neither does the summary truly describe the play. It features all number of characters from other plays, books, and works of fiction, but (although I suppose it's beneficial) familiarity with these characters is not essential. The play is a comedy that can find humor in everything, from where Hedda's husband hides the gun to Mammy's propensity towards servitude. As such, it transforms Hedda into a tongue-in-cheek whining version of her tragic self, plays on a few cultural references and clichés, and takes nothing seriously—but alongside the humor, the play is serious indeed. As failed creations die left and right, Hedda comes closer to the Furnace, and Mammy encounters a number of more progressive black characters, the play develops a commentary which, although it never overwhelms the humor, speaks on the role of fiction, the role of suffering, and the role of vanguards (those that showed up to the party when the host was still setting up).

I adored The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, but no, it wasn't perfect. As a piece of meta-commentary, the play has a story, but the story is a tool: to achieve humor, and to achieve a dialog about fiction. The plot appears in broad sweeps and often leapfrogs over itself, on to the next setting and set of characters. The humor, sometimes dark, often broadly offensive, and both exaggerated and quite clever, marched right up my isle and seemed to amuse the rest of audience as well. The meta-dialog is unusual to see in a play because it requires the play to sacrifice itself: in order to speak about so openly about fiction, this piece of fiction has to take second seed to its dialog. It's a change from what I'm used to, and one that I appreciated. While none of Whitty's conclusions are groundbreaking, they are true—and couched within the play's dark humor they are surprisingly moving. These conclusions appeal to both the playing characters and the watching audience. The climax comes when Hedda finally discovers the purpose to her limited, repetitive afterlife—that the audience may experience, again and again, the fictional truth of her life as it is in Isben's play—I was moved to tears. (But I'm easy like that.) Largely well acted, sometimes mispaced (too fast here, too slow there), consistently funny, and an interesting dialog on the purpose of fiction—I loved this play, and I hope that it receives a wider audience. While not perfect, it is a change, and a welcome one: humor and an intelligent bit of commentary in one.