Arts preview: Adrian Noble’s staging of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
Adrian Noble counts himself lucky that he's been "whacking successful" when it comes to staging Henrik Ibsen's works. The first time he did — for a 1980 production of A Doll's House — he earned the Circle Theatre Award for best director. The Master Builder (1989), Little Eyolf (1997), and a 2010 production of Hedda Gabler have also been well received.
HEDDA GABLER
New Vision Arts Festival
Adrian Noble counts himself lucky that he's been "whacking successful" when it comes to staging Henrik Ibsen's works. The first time he did — for a 1980 production of A Doll's House — he earned the Circle Theatre Award for best director. The Master Builder (1989), Little Eyolf (1997), and a 2010 production of Hedda Gabler have also been well received.
The former artistic director and chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company has been exploring different areas, such as directing Kate Bush's recent comeback concert, and several operas and musicals since he left the company in 2003. He likes to direct the classics as he says they're challenging, and "they resonate in a way that's really wonderful."
"I discovered there were structural elements in A Doll's House that, without drawing attention to themselves, magnified the action and made it exist on a more epic scale," says Noble. "Ibsen's works are interesting because they are subversive. Nora Helmer in A Doll's House doesn't just walk out on her husband; she walks out on her small children. And Hilda Wangel [of The Master Builder] encourages another person to commit suicide."
The 64-year-old director has been in Hong Kong for over a month to direct a Cantonese adaptation of Hedda Gabler for the New Vision Arts Festival, with Sean Curran of Theatre du Pif as co-producer. Noble says the story, about a bourgeois marriage between an aristocratic woman and an academic, is one that needs to be told many times.