УДК: 792.09

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2022-4-55-70

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Margarita M. Odesskaya

Dr.Sc. in Philology, Professor of Russian Language Department
Russian State University for the Humanities
Moscow, Russia
E-mail: mar-1432998@yandex.ru

Hedda Gabler on the Russian Stage: A Life Through Time

Abstract

The subject of the study is the perception and interpretation of the play Hedda Gabler, by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, which has been staged in theatres of Moscow and St. Petersburg over the century. The study is based on critical reviews published in Moscow’s press over the last century up to our time, as well as the author’s own impressions from some performances of the early 21st century. Despite the fact that Hedda Gabler was staged in Russian theatres more often than any other Ibsen play, it has continuously resulted in disputes and contradictory reviews, which often reflect both misunderstanding of the play itself and also of various director’s interpretations of it. In the pre-revolutionary period, on the one hand, there were realistic productions staged, while others were made in the Art Nouveau style of Vsevolod Meyerhold. According to critics, both ways to interpret the play strayed far from the plot in Ibsen’s play. In Soviet times, Kama Ginkas interpreted the play as a psychological drama. In the post-perestroika period, Nina Chusova and Mindaugas Karbauskis offered simplified and even vulgarized versions of the play. In the author’s opinion, the performance which came closest to Ibsen’s idea and style for the play was created by V. Pazi in Saint Petersburg State Academic Lensoviet Theatre. The reason for such difficulties in productions on the Russian stage is in the very nature of the drama, which ends with the protagonist’s suicide. Such a finale is not logically motivated or conditioned by a total inevitability, it is also not prepared for by the chain of events taking place on stage. With such a finale, Ibsen altered the traditional structure and content of tragedy in its classical sense.

Keywords

Ibsen, Hedda Gabler, theatre interpretation, Russian theatre, poetics of a drama.

For citation

Odesskaya M. M. Hedda Gabler on the Russian Stage: A Life Through Time. Theatre. Fine Arts. Cinema. Music. 2022, no. 4, pp. 55–70.

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2022-4-55-70

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Received: 24.09.2022

Revised: 09.11.2022

Accepted: 14.11.2022