Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic: a great production of a flawed adaptation

Hedda Gabler is one of my favourite plays of all times. I have read the original Ibsen play and seen it performed many times in different countries. I simply can't get enough of Hedda for reasons I will explain in a later post. When I last saw it in a small theatre in Tokyo with the stunning Japanese actress Rei Asami in the lead role, I was so overcome with emotion, I could not move for a few minutes after the curtain came down. 

Ann Mackmin's production of Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic had an stellar cast with an appropriately petit-looking Sheridan Smith doing an excellent job of playing the complex undertones in Hedda. The closing scene was also the most original I have seen so far. But – call me a purist – as an admirer of Henrik Ibsen's original text, I felt let down and irritated by some of the liberties Brian Friel had taken with the script. 

The introduction of Judge Brack's obsession with Americanisms just about works in adding a comic effect to the dialogue. But George Tesman, Hedda's well-intentioned yet utterly tedious academic husband, is caricatured to an uncomfortable extreme: his attachment to a pair of slippers embroidered by his aunt is too pathetic to be believable and the boisterous dancing around the house, only minutes before the tragic climax, as Tesman receives news of his wife's pregnancy, momentarily turns the tense crescendo scene into slapstick comedy.

The scene reminded me of the jollities in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. While Dancing at Lughnasa is set in County Donegal in Ireland and the dancing in it is in context, seeing a grown-up Doctor Tesman skip round the stage wearing a tiara made of flowers, made me cringe in my seat with embarrassment.

Perhaps the most disturbing addition in this Friel version was Hedda's confession to Judge Brack that she cannot control her impetus to be cruel, that she feels 'possessed'at times, hinting at some kind of personality disorder that could have been sorted by psychiatric treatment. Hedda is not insane, only insanely unhappy, and that is a fundamental point that should not have been tinkered with.

We despise Hedda's cruelty and selfishness but we cannot help but empathise with her loneliness and her lack of purpose. She married Tesman by choice but feels trapped and suffocated. She probably feels disempowered at a time when the only choice a woman could have in life was to marry a respectable man and bear his children. The evil in Hedda is the evil that lives in all of us. Blaming her mood swings on a mental imbalance would be oversimplifying the complexities of human nature in a character that symbolises the dilemma of many women in the past and present.

In the original Hedda Gabler, Ibsen hints but never confirms whether Hedda is actually pregnant. The production at the Old Vic was the first time I have ever seen Hedda spell out not only that she is pregnant but in her fourth months of gestation. Unless Friel assumed the audience would be so obtuse they could not have guessed otherwise, this felt like too much information. 

Not everything has to be so explicit and in your face. Subtle meaning and subtext only make a play more enjoyable to watch. I could be mistaken but I don't think Hedda is ever heard swearing in the original play. Her cruelty and contempt for others are implicit in her actions; she does not need to speak out. But when Hedda calls Tesman's aunt 'interfering bitch', she sounds rather anachronistically like a young woman from the 21st century, when she is not even dressed like one. 

Yet, for all its textual flaws, the production was still well worth seeing.

The billowing white curtains stage right created great atmosphere and Lez Brotherston's centre stage set with the glass-walled backroom worked as a wonderfully effective solution for the staging of the final scene. Hedda enclosed within the glass walls as she finds out her plans to manipulate and control other people's fates have backfired is a  most powerful metaphor to her increasing isolation – she becomes a prisoner of her own destiny. 

Explicitness suddenly works at the end. Blood splattered on the glass, the audience witnessing, through the glass, the anguished faces of Tesman and Brack as they run into the room where Hedda has shot herself, their cries of despair muffled by the closed walls, Judge Brack's hands smearing Hedda's blood on the glass; it is tragedy complete.

Outside, Mrs Elvsted, indignant and almost indifferent to the drama in the house, quietly gathering papers from the floor is superb in the screaming message it conveys. The grand finale saves the day; all flaws are forgiven. 

I am now ready for another Hedda Gabler. Bring it on.

The apostrophe that nearly made Kate pregnant

Hats off to the The Sunday Express for their front page headline in yesterday's edition, with one very cleverly placed apostrophe, which, if unnoticed, would have given the story a an entirely new meaning: Kate & Will's Hope for Children.

At first glance, the heading sounds like an official confirmation, by Kate and William, that they are indeed trying to start a family – news which would have delighted royal womb watchers.

The placement of the apostrophe is so cheekily subtle, hooked, almost like an afterthought, on the side of the  "s" in Wills, that many readers will not have seen it and may have bought the paper hoping to read a story about Kate' Middleton's impending pregnancy.

Notice how the order of the names is also intentional: Wills and Kate's would have necessitated an "s" after the apostrophe, making it too obviously into a possessive case.

The article is actually about a charity for disadvantaged children the royal couple is supporting. A non-story with a sensational story heading.

Brilliant subbing job.

What a difference an apostrophe makes.

Fifty Shades of Cyberlove: the future of love on the internet

The Guardian Weekend Magazine published an interesting compilation of stories last week (The way we love now, 30.06.12) of couples who started their relationship online.

This is the 21st century. Relationships that start on social media sites are no longer a novelty. Among my Facebook "friends", at least two whom I have never personally met, met their other halves on MySpace, before Facebook became mainstream. Several friends of friends got married to people they met on dating sites. In fact my husband and I also met online, although, being old-fashioned, admitting it always makes me feel terribly awkward.

Cyberspace is the new clubbing scene. Cyberlove's in the air. Everyone's doing it.

Love in Second Life
Of all stories in the Guardian article, one caught my attention: the story of the couple who met in Second Life – as avatars. 

In real life, each already had a partner with whom they were not happy with. In the virtual world, they bought a land, built a house (using real money), moved in together, then he proposed. They got to know each other so intimately in Second Life, by the time they actually met in person, they were already in love and their real-life appearances didn't seem to matter. The rest is history. Staying true to their parallel lives, they got married first in Second Life, then, a year later, in real life. 

Four years and two children later, they sit in the same room and their avatars, now slightly changed in appearance, still meet in Second Life. Is this creepy? Is it sweet and innocent? Is this the new 'way we love'?

I have never immersed myself in Second Life but have seen a number of demos and videos. I know, for example, it is possible for couples to have a baby virtually. Honest to God. The boss of someone I know, who has recently had her second child, met and gave birth to one in Second Life with the man who is now her real-life husband and father of her children.

Make-believe
What is frightening about an immersive world like Second Life is that, unlike in Facebook and Twitter, you can acquire a new identity with a name and apperance that has nothing to do with who you actually are. You are, in effect, playing make-believe and the make-believe can sometimes spill out into the real world. Scary but tantalising.

I can relate to that. I grew up as a super-introverted, isolated child, who had far more friends in make-believe world than in real life. I can understand the attraction, the freedom that a virtual world encounter in a make-believe body can give you.

Mummy Porn
To me part of reason people pursue cyber-relationships links in with why erotica  is currently booming in the publishing industry led by the success of E L James' Fifty Shades of Grey, the novel with kinky sex everyone can't stop talking about.

Sales figures of the trilogy has surpassed the 10 million mark and made the expression "mummy porn" trend. Fifty Shades of Grey has also had some terrible reviews saying the book could not be less erotic if it tried, but women continue to buy it, either to find out what the hype is all about, or perhaps because they, to borrow the famous line from When Harry Met Sally, want to "have what she's having".  It could be a PR stunt, but stories abound of women claiming the novel spiced up their sex lives; one woman even wrote to the author saying she became pregnant as a result of reading her book.

The point is fantasy arouses women. Whereas men are turned on by visual clues, for women sex starts in the brain. Their minds need to be turned on before the body follows suit. Nothing better than a bit of erotic fantasy then to get the imagination going. The bondage and submission scenes in EL James' book may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is good escapism; it is irrelevant that the reader would never dream of using any "Ann Summers accoutrements" in real life, as Suzanne Moore cleverly put it in this column; to live the unimaginable in one's fantasy can still be a turn-on.

Out of curiosity, I googled whether it is possible for couples to have cybersex in Second Life and discovered this amusing guide to "getting started with sex in Second Life". Apparently avatars can take off their clothes, purchase genitalia and other body parts at the "Xcite store" to kit out their bodies, even have orgasms, but there can be awkward technical difficulties in manipulating the act itself. The whole idea sounds rather laughable and offputting but it may just be because I haven't got into the "spirit" of Second Life.

Starting early
If you thought befriending avatars in virtual environments was only for naughty adults, I would like to remind you that Moshi Monsters, Mind Candy's virtual world for 6 to 12-year-olds, currently boasts more than 50 million users. That means 50 million children (well, let's assume they are mosty children) are adopting a pet monster, or moshling, as an avatar, making friends with other monsters, paying for things in virtual money, playing virtual games.

The future
It cannot be that far-fetched then to think that the moshling avatar user of today may become inhabitants of Second Life tomorrow. In 20 years' time, we may all have more 'friends' online than in real life; we may be juggling real and virtual lovers.

While old schoolers will still be obsessing about their privacy settings on Facebook, the generation who grew up communicating through instant messaging and Facebook walls, casually dipping in and out of virtual environments, those young people may be setting new rules for cybercourtship, redefining concepts of loyalty.

Relationship boundaries may shift. Will we have a revival of sorts of the hippie movement of the 60s, or will virtual couples live by the same societal rules as in real life?

The future of love sounds promisingly titillating.

Dr Moncrieff on depression and drugs: dopey but not cured

Could psychiatric drugs, such a antidepressants, cause rather than cure mental disorders? Is chemical cure a myth? This was the topic of Joanna Moncrieff's talk at the Lewes Skeptics in the Pub's monthly event this week.

Dr. Moncrieff is a clinical lecturer in the department of mental health sciences at University College of London. Her book The Myth of Chemical Cure is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Her talk was centred on the current mainstream view that an emotional or mental disorder is a result of a chemical imbalance, which drugs can help correct . However, these drugs have a psychoactive effect, just like alcohol or narcotics, which create a drug-induced state, altering the way we think, feel and behave. These effects, says Dr Moncrieff, may end up numbing or masking actual psychological and emotional problems.

This short discussion on the Today programme between Joanna Moncrieff and consultant psychiatrist Trevor Turner from 2009 gives you a good taster of the controversies round this topic.

Informed consent
Joanna Moncrieff did not say drugs can't or don't help. He concern is that patients are not always being given the full picture on the unpleasant or harmful effects psychiatric drugs may have on their bodies and mind. The emphasis is heavily on the pro-drug view that they will fix some sort of underlying chemical imbalance they have in their brain.

In truth, science still knows very little about how the brain actually works, or what the chemical makeup is of emotions, elation, depression, love, what have you. Not enough research has been done on how drugs work (apparently, the effect of antidepressants have been shown not to be that different from a sugar pill's), their mental and physical impact, their long and short term side effects, side-effects, and the withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking them.

A modern malaise
Statistics show that over the past decade there has been a four fold increase in the use of drugs in mental health treatment. It does not come as a surprise. We are all popping "happy pills" prescribed without hesitation by our GPs, as nonchalantly as if they were sweets.

Someone in the audience asked, "Are antidepressants overprescribed these days, or are more people depressed now?" Dr Moncrieff's answer made me sigh and prompted me to write this post:

"As a society we tend to see our problems through the prism of depression. Life now is far more demanding now than 50 years ago."

She pointed out, quite rightly, that performance expectation in all areas of our lives is much higher these days, and drugs like Prozac are even promoted as making you perform above normal levels.

Balancing act
No wonder we are all so depressed. We are balancing12-hour shifts in the office with school runs for the kids, trips to the gym (because everyone else is doing it), the obligatory visit or call to a parent, the mustn't-forget drinks with friends you haven't seen in a while, the grocery shopping, the hoovering, the laundry, the ironing, the cooking and the planing of the next holiday. All this, while looking amazing, showing top poductivity and staying emotionally balanced.

Even if you haven't got children, your parents are dead or don't talk to you, and you never cook or clean, in your head, you are still responding to someone's expectations: your boss's, your spouse's, your parents (even if they are no longer alive), society's. We do not like letting people down, and maybe therein lies the problem. Are we constantly trying – and failing – to be the perfect colleague, the perfect boss, the perfect wife or husband, someone's dutiful child or parent?

No labels
I am surrounded by people who have overstretched themeslves physically, mentally or emotionally and have suffered nervous breakdowns as a result, people who needed to take long sabbaticals before they were able to work again, others who regularly rely on drugs and/or alcohol to keep functioning in the high-speed autobahn of life. I have personally experienced a near-breakdown on a number of occasions for having demanded too much of myself. I do it again and again; I never seem to learn...

Why do we try so hard? Why can't we embrace our limitations and admit we can't please everyone all of the time? That we have widely varying stress tolerance levels, and none of us are super-heroes?

Vulnerability
I want to applaud Joanna Moncrieff for her belief that people should not be universally labelled as "depressed" and given random chemicals to suppress its symptoms, that they ought to be seen as individuals with specific problems for which different solutions are possible. Maybe the pharmaceutical industry, colluding with pychiatrists and politicians, have bundled us all into one large nut case sac, and called us depressed, psychotic or bipolar to suit their own agendas, doping us with drugs to keep us sweet and troublefree. Who knows?

Acute cases of mental illness excepted, let's face it: we are all prone to some degree of gloom and melancholy at times. Just because pills are readily available that make you feel happy and confident, we should not shy away from a more important debate – on how we can change attitudes in society, and in ourselves, that could lead to less depression and a better understanding of ourselves and our vulnerability.

After all, being vulnerable is part of being human. Give us licence to fail.

Haiku on real love

Browsing through a book called Haiku for the SIngle Girl (Penguin), which I found on a colleague's desk, I came across a verse that made me smile. 


"He makes me happy. 
If he also makes me sad, 
Then I'll know it's love."


My colleague snorted and thought this was meant to be cynical, I disagree. If you have ever been in love – really in love – you know the above is true. 


Sadness is an intrinsic part of love, grown-up love. 


Just an idle random lunch-time thought.

On love and letting go (revisited)

I am sure I have written before about letting go, but I will write about it again. Because for me it is a recurring theme. And no one has as yet discovered an easy way to do it.

In less than a week we are moving house – from a three-bedroom house, with plenty of storage room, to a two-bedroom flat with a small second bedroom – which means a brutal clear-out has become necessary. For a natural hoarder like me, nothing could be more challenging than making snap decisions about what to keep and what to throw away. With every item going into the bin, or the charity bag, I need time to grieve and consider. It drives my partner insane and has been the cause of endless rows.

On my bookcase, for example, I have a set of two-volume dictionary on English phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions, which are one of my most treasured possessions. As a student in Brazil, I saved months of pocket money to be able to afford them. I have always loved words and languages. Collecting imported reference books, particularly dictionaries, through which I could learn all those wonderful new words and expressions, was a treat that madly excited me. Even though I probably know most of the words in them now and have not used the dictionaries in years, they hold too much sentimental value for me to part with. "Keep."

Basket

Last weekend I took our dog’s basket to a pet charity shop to be re-homed, as it were. Our beloved mutt Binks has been dead for a year and a half now but we are only now doing away with his basket.

Since he became blind following a series of strokes, Binks spent a considerable amount of time curled up in it, sleeping. The basket was his favourite place in the house, a place where he felt safe and comfortable, where, on house cleaning days, he sought refuge from the noise of the vaccum cleaner he detested. It was also where he was sent to if he had misbehaved.

“Binks, (geh) In den Korb!” ((Go) into your basket!), said in an angry voice, was an instruction he understood as punishment for bad behaviour. (Binks had come from a dog rescue in Germany and only responded to commands in German.) It made us feel less cruel to know his place of punishment was also his safe haven.

The local pet charity was more than happy to accept the donation and reassured me the basket would go to a good home. I felt relieved and happy to hear it, but the moment I shut the house door behind me, tears came flowing down, quite unexpectedly.

"We still have his ashes and his collar", my husband said, trying to offer comfort. We do, but Binks’ basket was his home inside the home, impregnated with his smell and presence. Where it used to lie, in a gap underneath the kitchen counter, the empty hole now looks awkwardly large, screaming the blaring absence of a life that once was.

Coping
We react in widely different ways when we lose something or someone we loved. Even though Binks was my husband’s inseparable best friend for 12-13 years, when he died, he dealt with the grief by detaching himself from all objects associated with Binks' memory. I, on the contrary, latched onto every scrap of memento I could get hold of.

We could not agree on his ashes – I wanted them back, he did not. I put my foot down, paid for the ashes to be returned, and placed Binks’ remains, along with his collar, inside his basket, his place of slumber.

My partner says his ashes are not him and has forbidden me from displaying them anywhere in the house visible to him, but they bring me comfort, closeness, and keep fond memories alive.

Even in romance, when our love is unrequited, or betrayed, we tend to cling onto to the pain and can’t easily let go. I often wonder why. Partly we may be reluctant to accept that what or whom we loved is gone and beyond our reach; partly we may need the experience of intense pain as an antidote to intense love, although, far from ‘curing’ love, pain only exacerbates it.

A twice divorced psychotherapist I once went out with told me love and pain were two sides of the same coin. We continuously crave and pursue love in order to feel the acute pain of its loss that reminds us we are alive. I dismissed his views as having been skewed by his failed marriages, yet I was alarmed by the possibility this could be true. I do hope we are not all masochists seeking perverse pleasure from the grief of loss.
 
Reward
Over the years I have become better at letting go of both material things and personal connections, although I cannot say I have reached that point of nirvana, where I can freely let go without suffering. Whenever I start feeling possessive, I try to remind myself of the people in northern Japan, who have lost everything they ever owned in the recent earthquake and tsunami.

But with living things, be it an animal or a person, the process is so much harder. And if you have, loved and let go in the past, you know it only takes a small trigger to make the memories of love, of the warm tingling love made you feel inside, come back to haunt you. It can make you long all over again for a moment that will not return, a scent, a touch, a smile, a look, a kiss. It can break your heart again and again.

I wish I knew for certain there was at least a karmic cycle to the kind of love you once let go but can’t ever forget, that there was a way of knowing it would one day come back into your life, perhaps in a more mature or changed form, as a reward for the courage of letting go.

Meanwhile I embrace the pain; I do not fight it, but accept it. The pain I may one day be able to let go. The love not. The love is mine to keep and keep and keep whatever anyone says.

Potholes and dog poo: is this the future of journalism?

Photo courtesy of Matt Callow

"I don't care about local news."

The bold statement 'The Chancer', one of the journalist graduates from The Wannabe Hacks blog, made in a post about local journalism failing to engage young people attracted a string of of angry comments from several journalists, who called his argument "parochial", "naive", "ridiculous and lazy".

Knowing the power of the Internet in helping employers hire and fire, I was astounded that a young graduate, who "wanna be a hack", should have exposed such eyebrow-raising views in a public forum. His views, however, are far from being unique.

I live in a small, low-average-income town, where, I am certain, young people also think the local paper is only good for wrapping fish and chips. Apart from a few pubs and gambling places, our high street does not offer particularly attractive young leisure options. Not surprisingly, vandalism is a common local occurrence.

A large Christmas tree put up in the high street at the end of last year was tied to a security camera pole to prevent theft. Despite the effort, within 24 hours, its decorations had been stolen and destroyed. No one was even shocked but it filled me with rage and contempt. What had happened to community spirit? Where was the feeling of belonging and wanting to make things better?

Not all young people are apathetic of course. And not reading the local paper doesn't make you into a vandal either. The Chancer, as far as I know, is a law-abiding citizen, but his lack of interest in the local goings-on reflect that of a vast number of young people across the country. They do not feel a tie to their local area. They do not yet have social responsibilities that can be affected by local politics, local tax, local rubbish collection.

We can berate the wannabe hack for his flawed argument but not for his brutal honesty.

Local news readers
The editor-in-chief of my local newspaper recently extolled the importance of the paper in a double-page spread commemorating Local Newspaper Week (9 - 15 May).

He said the local voices that get heard through the paper represent "the bedrock of any democracy". The Prime Minister's also sent in a message reminding readers local papers help "hold the powerful to account", and former Guardian editor Peter Preston, concludes his column with: "Prize it, relish it, support it, because [..] it helps your world go round."

Democracy? Accountability? World spinner? When I stare at one of our local papers' front page story, and see a Yorkshire Terrier being hailed 'a hero'...for having barked – thus alerting his sleeping owner to a fire, the temptation is great to sneer at these idealistic concepts. 

Right, let's face it. The general pattern tends to be: a couple of larger stories from neighbouring towns, a smattering of nibs about local events and meetings; rehashed press release material, an OAP's 90th birthday, someone running for charity. All in all, fairly sleepy, polite news. An occasional death or crime thrown in for good measure.

Yet, if you look at the Letters page, you will see many locals and local politicians, have read it and written in with their say about an environmental issue, rubbish and bins, about cycle paths, or the lack of them, about dangerous potholes and annoying dog poo fouling the streets.

Whether the young are listening or not, this is their town, their community, their home – they do care. And as long as someone cares, journalists have a duty to fulfil.

Yes, there is room for improvement. Some decent subbing would not go amiss for starters – spelling and grammar in our local paper are often embarrassingly atrocious – and reporters could do with replacing lame press release rewriting with more footwork. But at the end of the day, no matter how good the writing is, papers still need advertising income, still need to sell copies. The question is how.

Dog shit and the future of news
I had hoped some kind of magic formula combining digital + (hyper)local + monetisation could be the answer. But when even the excellent Guardian Local initiative announced its closure for being 'unsustainable', my heart sank. What next then?

Talking at the Brighton Future of News earlier this week, Guardian data journalist James Ball pointed out that a street-by-street mapping of local crime is something no newspaper seems to be recording, but, if one was available, it could generate massive reader interest.

A light bulb went on over my head.

Could using data creatively be one of the solutions? Data visualisation is innovative, exciting and appealing to the eye. It is a fun way to tell a story with pretty pictures – much like a graphic novel – although it is still up to the journalist to find the story in the data.

Most importantly, it could engage younger readers, like The Chancer, who might just take a bit more interest in the local news. Of course this would still imply a migration from print to digital, but more eyeballs on local news can't be a bad thing.

At the BBC Social Media Summit (hashtag #bbcsms on Twitter) this week, Will Perrin founder of Talk About Local mentioned a North London local site, which, despite being run at only £8/month, attracts the equivalent proportionate audience as BBC's Newsnight – even though, in his words, it is fundamentally about "crime, potholes and dog shit". [Watch the video on the BBC College of Journalism site (26min in)]

Will Perrin's words convince me even more that journalists discussing the future of local news should be more concerned about format, presentation and delivery, a little less about local content, which although spurned by the young and the apathetic, still seems pertinent.

In my amused perverted mind, I am imagining a Google Map of dog fouling with pet owners' names against turd-shaped placemarks to name and shame offenders. It wouldn't work in real life, but it would certainly grab readers' attention and provoke mirth.

BBC's Dave Lee's tweet below says it all. We could spend a lifetime debating the future of news and local journalism, but the answer, I suspect, is already right here, at our feet. Quite literally.