REVIEW: Hedda Gabler at the Reading Rep

Reading Rep is celebrating its tenth anniversary of its formation and a second season in its new venue with some bold and original adaptations of familiar stories. After the glorious success of a one-woman version of Jekyll and Hyde with the incredible Audrey Brisson and an intriguing resetting of Christmas Carol in the Huntley and Palmer Reading Biscuit factory comes a modern adaptation of Hedda Gabler set somewhere near London. This risk-taking approach to theatre combined with a £10 ticket price for those under 30 appears to be engaging the local communities and bringing a younger excitable audience into the venue which is to be celebrated and applauded.

The original Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler was written in 1891 around a woman trapped in a marriage and a house that she does not want and has been considered by many as one of the great dramatic female roles in theatre. When I saw Sheridan Smith play the role at Old Vic in 2012, she beautifully captured the tragic consequences of her manipulative behaviour in a grand period house. This new production at the Reading Rep intimate venue is written by Harriet Madeley and seeks to reinvent the story in a modern setting with the two rival academic authors competing for publication as well as the attention of Hedda now given a modern twist by changing the gender of Eilert Lovburg, her former lover to Isla. The rest follows with the three women, Isla, Thea and Hedda secretly attracted to each other, seemingly without the men, George, her husband, and Brack, now a publishing agent being fully aware. Curiously the effect is that rather than feeling Hedda is trapped in a six-week-old marriage, she seems manipulative and in control of her actions and one wonders why she simply does not leave her husband whose mind is clearly on his work. Indeed, the characters have become one-dimensional and their jumps in behaviours seem unrealistic and unbelievable.

REVIEW: Jekyll and Hyde at Reading Rep

Gary McNair’s adaptation of the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the opening play in Reading Rep’s 10th anniversary season at its elegant new home appears to have returned to the source and tells the story through the eyes of a lawyer friend of Jekyll, Gabriel Utterson who seeks to unravel the mystery of a succession of horrific brutal attacks in the streets around his home. It’s a simple and bold device but succeeds because they have been fortunate to secure the wonderful Audrey Brisson to play Utterson and all the characters he meets. 

Brisson is an extraordinary actress with an expressive face, sparkling eyes and a physical presence that grabs your attention and does not let go. She was stunning in the musical Amelie at the Watermill Newbury and in the West End and has just completed an excellent run in Theatre Royal Bath’s brilliant production of Into the Woods but here she is alone on stage for the seventy-minute run time and prowls the raised platform engaging the audience with her looks, pauses and characterisations. Utterson gradually reveals the story but as he says, “we all already know” the truth about Jekyll’s experiments on himself, so the interest is generated through explaining the lawyer’s discoveries and the piecing together of the evidence through the characters he meets. It begins with Jekyll’s change of will in favour of Mr Hyde without explanation and the truth begins to dawn on Utterson when Sir Danvers Carew, MP is murdered.

REVIEW: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Reading Rep

I have had the most rare vision. I had a dream: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A play within a dressing room within a play within a theatre… I hope you’re following! 

Paul Stacey’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Athenian comedy is set in a dressing room of a theatre, with the set emulating the rough-and-ready backstage areas that will be familiar to anyone who has crossed the threshold at a theatre. Dressing tables, boxes, instruments, and costume rails make up the space, with a scaffolding tower dominating the stage in front of an enormous moon. The actors arrive for work (and yoga) before the dominating director bounds in and decides to workshop his new play ‘Bottoms Dream’ which will be performed for the Jubilee. From here we go on a journey through an abridged version of the Elizabethan classic, with modern twists and feverish energy. 

The direction from Paul Stacey and Chris Cumming does away with most of the conventions that you may expect from a Shakespeare play. The actors easily move between their actor characters and their Shakespearean characters, showing wonderful distinction both between the two and between their multirole characters within the Athenian world. David Fishley’s Oberon is powerful and distinguished, and his voice resonates around the theatre with strength and heart.

REVIEW: Dorian at the Reading Rep Theatre

Living in Reading you can’t escape the legacy of Oscar Wilde and his notorious spell in Reading Gaol. In 2016 we experienced the extraordinary reading by Ralph Fiennes of the letter Wilde wrote to his friend Lord Alfred Douglas, De Profundis, staged in front of his cell door within the Prison gym and were held spellbound by the performance and the words for three hours. In 2017 we saw a wonderful adaption of his 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Grey by Phoebe Eclair-Powell at the Watermill in Newbury with a cast of three actresses and a minimal set. Even in lockdown we saw the wonderful adaption in 2020 in streamed theatre of the book by Henry Filloux-Bennett, the artistic director of the Lawrence Batley and staged at the Barn Theatre in Cirencester. So, it was perhaps inevitable that Reading Rep should seek to celebrate the opening of its new venue with another adaption of Oscar Wilde’s work. 

The remnants of the Watermill production of The Picture of Dorian Grey can be seen as Phoebe Eclair Powell’s evolves her script with director Owen Horsley, to blend in Oscar Wilde’s own life story from acclaimed author to ostracised invalid as the book was used as evidence against him in his trial for gross indecency. They seek to emphasise the change from Victorian morality to the 2017 pardon by the Queen of men charged under the abolished law by exposing the queer undertones of the novel and challenging the audience to embrace the queer narrative. As a result, we are presented with three interwoven themes played by three performers in a bold but at times confusing and outspoken exploration of the story.