Resolving Hedda

"Henrik Ibsen: Ahead of his time. Father of modern drama. Often considered an early male feminist for confronting the constraints on women in the 19th century.

The title character of one of his plays has a bone to pick with him, though.

Hedda Gabler has had enough of being strong and uncompromising yet given just one means of independence at the end of her story: by killing herself. So she's been bursting…to try to wrest control of HEDDA GABLER and chart a new course.

She's winning audience after audience to her side in Jon Klein's boisterous new comedy RESOLVING HEDDA…

One of the pricklier characters in the dramatic canon, Hedda-introduced to the world in 1891-has never had a problem speaking her mind, and that quality is only intensified here. She glares at the heavens, heaping scorn on the Norwegian master as she tries to think of ways to circumvent his precision-crafted plot, which piles indignities on her while blocking avenues of escape - `the perfect killing machine', as she bitterly describes it.

Ibsen gives her plenty of qualities to help her along: fierce intelligence, bravery and tenacity. Other traits must be fought. `I'm bored and willful and perverse', she says ruefully, `at least according to Wikipedia'.

Yes, Wikipedia. For all of her Victorian trappings, Hedda is very much a woman of 2017. She's been keeping current these last 126 years and drops offhand references to Oprah's Book Club and phone apps, as well as uttering the occasional curse word.

The other characters don't know what to make of her as she restlessly paces her elegant drawing room. Her ineffectual academician of a husband, George, is flustered even more than usual; still, he and the others keep following the paths that lead toward her usual fate while she tries to steer them elsewhere, all while she battles props-pistols, a sole-copy manuscript-that keep playing into the action exactly as Ibsen wrote them.

The comic tone spreads to the others, however…

Klein, the author of such previous Victory hits as T BONE N WEASEL and WISHING WELL, delivers laughs at a steady pace…

Pure entertainment is its own reward, though, and RESOLVING HEDDA, by its very existence, makes a larger statement. However much Hedda might abuse him, Ibsen deserves her-and our-admiration for writing so forcefully about issues that perpetually bedevil us…

It's good to have him still at our side."

Daryl H Miller, Los Angeles Times
"Henrik and Hedda, a hilarious pair… Its author is the brilliantly clever and witty Jon Klein…Klein's hilarious script."

Cynthia Citron, Santa Monica Daily Press