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RESOLVING HEDDA at
WASHINGTON STAGE GUILD

SPECIAL ALERT As a double treat, WSG will host Reading Hedda Gabler on Wed., April 10, at 7 pm.  with he same cast in their corresponding roles in the Ibsen classic.
Hedda Gabler is hilarious.  If you never thought of Ibsen’s heroine like that, Hedda herself in John Klein’s very hip Resolving Hedda will  explain it all to you --what is really going on in a way that Spark notes have missed all these years. 
Being one of the most important characters in modern drama isnot enough if it means dying every night.  Kelly Karcher as Hedda is determined to have her life go on after the show.  The audience is rooting for her all the way as she leads a cast of zanies starting with her hapless husband, George ( Jamie Smithson),  who is more concerned with Eilert  (Matthew Castleman) as an academic rival rather than his role as Hedda’s erstwhile lover. 
There is Thea (Emile Faith Thompson) Hedda’s innocent foil, Judge Brack (Steve Beall) who mixes it all up and Aunt Julia (Jewell Robinson) who joins in the confusion.
It’s double the fun when ridiculous characters don’t get the jokes they are.
While updating 19th century  women characters in terms of 21st century ideas on feminism seems to be popular, most revisions take a serious vein.  This is the time —and the need I might add— for a good look at it all through a comic eye.  And the surprising (spoiler alert) ending to this is the point—that Hedda is still who she really is in the end.   And maybe to add, we never really knew her before when only looked  through one of the very old and dusty lens.
Making her Stage Guild debut as set designer is Tara Lyman-Dobson. Other design elements are provided by a trio of WSD resident designers—Sigrid Johannesdottir with costumes, Frank DiSalvo with sound, and Marianne Meadows with lighting.
Resolving Hedda WASHINGTON STAGE GUILD   to  April 14


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