* Unit has parquet floors and a hot location — the “stage” is in the parlor.
* You sit here and here and here . . . (
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Hedda’s got some issues! (
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When it comes to ubiquitous plays, “Hedda Gabler” takes the cake. Not a season goes by without Henrik Ibsen’s neurotic anti-heroine popping up in New York (the past five years alone have seen major stagings starring Mary-Louise Parker, Cate Blanchett and Elizabeth Marvel).
But director John Gould Rubin’s modern-dress production of the 1890 work certainly stands out from the pack: It takes place in an East Village living room for only 25 people at a time.
No matter where you sit, the action’s never far — sometimes just a few uncomfortable inches away.
“I’m trying to convey a sense of intimacy,” says Rubin. “I make you, the audience, feel like you’re overhearing people, so you feel voyeuristic.”
It helps that his central lovebirds are played by Zachary Le Vey, who recalls the young Richard Gere, and Caitlin Fitzgerald (Meryl Streep’s daughter in “It’s Complicated”), who looks like an escapee from a ballet school.
But in a town as obsessed with real estate as New York, the real voyeurism is about the set.
And this isn’t your regular tenement living room: Rubin and his crew are using one floor of a four-story, 1850s townhouse. Far from ostentatious, though, the abode has a down-to-earth, lived-in feel, where a couch covered with kids’ graffiti sits underneath original moldings.
“I wasn’t interested in coming into the space and decorating it,” the director explains — though his crew did bring extra chairs for the audience. “I wanted to take advantage of a space that has character.”
This made sense in terms of the story, since Hedda and her new husband have just bought a house they can barely afford. “They could have moved into something like this building,” Rubin says with satisfaction.
(The owners, who want to remain anonymous, are away for the summer and donated their home for the project. The family can probably afford to be generous, as they put the house up for rent in June and July — seven hot weeks for a cool $25,000.)
A longtime member of the LAByrinth Theater Company, Rubin departs from the troupe’s commitment to new works on this extracurricular adventure. But he does keep to the LAB’s vérité approach in his staging, and the close quarters keep folks on their toes.
“It feels like we’re making a movie, where you look up from a take and there’s 25 people staring at you,” says Fitzgerald. “It requires a certain concentration, which is hard — and scary.”
For Rubin, closeness is what it’s all about. “ ‘Hedda Gabler’ lends itself to a broad theatricality, but I wanted to find a truth of the play that was more psychological and naturalistic,” he explains. “The idea was to find a way to perform it so the actors are talking in normal voices.” Indeed, one of the most striking things at a recent rehearsal was how softly the actors spoke, without any of the usual stage projecting. It lent the words a real-life casualness — in a real-life setting.
“Hedda Gabler” runs through Sept. 4. Attendance is free. For reservations, go to heddagablernyc.com.