Hedda Gabler

By the time the action commences in Hedda Gabler, our complicated titular heroine has taken on a married name (Tesman); playwright Henrik Ibsen named his play purposefully, identifying the spitfire Hedda as the product of her pre-marriage life. What follows, appropriately enough, entails anything but connubial bliss: envy, betrayal, death, and conniving. It's a play that can be approached from all manner of directions, depending on one's particular viewpoint and set of circumstances, but at its core it remains a startling depiction of an ambiguous woman's clash with conventional morality. In this Gremlin production, Mo Perry plays the character that has been called the female Hamlet. When this play debuted, audiences were shocked and confused by Hedda's contradictory machinations; more than a century later, it's probably safe to say that we haven't made light years of progress toward understanding human motivations.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 4 p.m. Starts: March 13. Continues through March 29, 2009