Hedda’s a Pistol

The mark of great art is not flowery prose nor sense-shattering spectacle. When a work communicates its truths to generations 100 years removed, one must take notice -- and Hedda Gabler continues to make people pay attention. Considered Henrik Ibsen’s magnificent female character, the titular Hedda is a feisty sparkplug unwilling and unable to settle into her plebian middle-class marriage to a poor, dull bastard. As her fiery past boils into the present, Hedda takes a desperate course of action, manipulating everyone whose life intersects hers. The Echo Theatre Company’s production of Hedda Gabler moves the setting from Norway in the 1890s to the suburbs of 1950s America, bringing the American dream and the pre-feminism role of the “good wife” into sharp focus. Hedda Gabler plays at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3 p.m. on Sunday (September 14 through 30) at the Johnson Hall Theater in the Third Baptist Church (620 North Grand Boulevard; 314-225-4329 or www.echotheatrecompany.org). Tickets are $15 to $20.
Thursdays-Sundays. Starts: Sept. 14. Continues through Sept. 30, 2007