Hedda Gabler

Director Àlex Rigola brings the modernity of Henrik Ibsen to our present to explore the contradictions of the great female character Hedda Gabler.

Free adaptation of this contemporary classic, considered one of the first texts of modern dramaturgy and widely represented on the stages of the Lliure. Dislocation, desires, loves and dislikes, ethical conflicts and destruction are the main themes that navigate the piece.

As Ibsen himself wrote: "I seek to represent human beings, emotions and human destinies on the basis of the social conditions and principles of the present". Under this premise, the director proposes a totally naked staging that leaves all the weight of the role in the actresses and actors, the dramatic tensions of the piece and in that confidentiality that is in the proximity with the audience, who will coexist with the artists inside the walls of a wooden box.

Hedda Gabler at the MAE
Hedda Gabler at the Europeana
Hedda Gabler at the Lliure


WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

"Àlex Rigola has turned his story not into a frenzy with disco neons, but into a naked mental space, limbos in which perhaps everything has already happened and is evoked slowly, with no possibility of amendment. Inside the wooden container in which he has already made several pieces, an agora with large steps and a small stage in which distance between actors and public is null, Rigola has shredded, leaving her in the bones, the story of Ibsen. Most of the time the actors, with street clothes and their civil names, are more voices and faces than bodies, leaning on the wall or standing still while they pronounce without haste loaded words, with echo: happiness, boredom, fun. Or reflect on how unbearable it is to always be with the same person. Such a minimalist bet would have difficult travel without a Hedda, Nausicaa Bonnín, that slightly lowering his head and staring at his companions makes vibrate even limbos. The melancholy, the power, the diabolical, are followed by his face before the audience of a montage in which there can be no less, but in which nothing seems to be missing."
Just Barranco - La Vanguardia

"Àlex Rigola plays, in a certain way, with the quantum: in his box (which places performers and spectators), the characters are not and are in turn. The actors work as if they were in a rehearsal room, absorbing the plot and adventure of the characters. [...] This time it is Henrik Ibsen and his tormented Hedda Gabler. Nausicaa Bonnín plays the role of tragic destiny, as if her machination only led to a beautiful and romantic ending, but ultimately dead. There is the release of Laia Marull, nor the mythmania in favor of the aura of the iconic actress Isabelle Huppert, or the vengeful look of the Cia. La Solitària. But Nausicaa, with Joan (Solé), Pol (López), Miranda (Gas) and Marc (Rodríguez) control a tension based on pauses, silences, looks and very brief displacements. It is like a game of Cluedo, which keeps an intrigue. [...] This generous cast, obedient to the rules of this theatrical form, tells and points to each spectator, as if it were a target. The audience is on and off the scene, therefore quantitatively. [...] In this space of intimacy, the public feels responsible for silence, for tension. He must listen in detail to the gesture, the displacements and some replies said inside, psychologically captivating that the sister with the format of shooting. And, for this reason, the public feels privileged: it must watch as never that no mobile vibrates, do not cough, do not stir too much in the bank. Rigola admits that claustrophobic people can suffer some crisis. But it is not so much for the sense of closure as for his attention not to unbalance the tension between the interpreters, who move in a strange naturalness. [...] An opportunity for theater in its purest state, made of pine wood, untreated and with a happiness that vanishes through the non-existent ceiling."
Jordi Bordes – Recomana.cat

"The Rigola method consists of starting from what is known about the chosen work and the characters and creating a free version that gives the impression that arises spontaneously from each of the performers. I say give the impression because the naturalness, the everyday, the proximity with the spectators, the apparent work of table or rehearsal has nothing of improvisation and it follows that in every gesture, in every silence, in every look, In each expression, there has been a previous work to achieve the desired effect without that prevents, in one or another function, some of the interpreters have an emotional impact that must incorporate without being able to avoid it. In this production, the actress Nausicaa Bonnín is Hedda Gabler but she is also or is only Nausicaa. And so, respectively, with each of the other characters who are not called by the patronymic of Henrik Ibsen but by their family names: Miranda, Pol, Joan, Marc... [...] In almost seventy minutes, they all revive the most essential of the plot of the work. Spectators and performers share the wooden stand and stage as if they were a single body. There is no sophisticated wardrobe. There is no nuance of illumination. There is no characterization. There is no overly theatrical action. There is only a fusion between the universal characters of Henrik Ibsen and the experiences appropriated by Nausicaa, Joan, Miranda, Pol, Marc... The same experiences that have immersed in a sea of doubts and uncertainties to today’s society. There is, at bottom, a good dramatic "carpentry". That is why I also said, returning to J. V. Foix, that 'a cal fuster hi ha novetat'... There is a Hedda Gabler that has strengthened itself to be what it wants to be. A Hedda Gabler turned to its destiny. A destiny that, despite the conformists, is not always the destiny that is written."
Andreu Sotorra – Clip de teatre