Word: lovborg
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...whole mood of the play tends to center around the mercurial temperament of Hedda. This leaves the rest of the cast at her violent mercy. The pathetically weak Thea Elvstead (Susan Levine), who has become the new love interest of Hedda's old flame Eilert Lovborg (Josh Frost), becomes one of the key victims of her wrath. In a revealing scene between the two, Hedda curls Thea's mousy locks around her fingers and snarls: "Maybe I will burn off your hair...
...play comes closer to achieving dramatic balance with the arrival of Eric Jacobson as the equally pivotal character Eilert Lovborg--the pawn to contrast with Brack and Hedda's manipulations, the hidden genius whose character weaknesses lock him into the same dead-ended bitterness as the rest...
Jacobson as Lovborg is not only convincing but heartrending, with a meek bearing masking an inner, doomed nobility of character. What keeps him and Brack from salvaging the play is the same lack of ambition that hampers the other actors. This time, though, the lack comes in the production staff itself. High-schoolish, thrown-together props repeatedly puncture the illusion, starting with the opening complaint of a maiden aunt (Barbara Nathan). "There's no more space here for these flowers," she laments, looking around at the polished, unoccupied tabletops of the Quincy JCR. "So many people have sent flowers already...
...convenience whom Hedda has come to despise, David Edelstein delivers a performance of convincing contrast to Aquino. His smaller stature reflects a personality of petty dimensions, and he plays it with the right touch of insecure eagerness and earnest naivete. Tesman's pride is his books, his major tension Lovborg's intellectual competition and his own half-admitted jealousy--a myopic outlook that leaves little room for his smothered wife...
...other hand, Stephen Toope is badly miscast as Eilert Lovborg. Ibsen clearly intended to represent Lovborg as a figure of undisciplined genius, a man whose capacity for passion, even if manifested in debauchery, contrasts alluringly with Tesman's effete conventionality. Yet in this performance Hedda displays no more respect for Lovborg than for anyone else, a major misinterpretation but understandable in view of Toope's characterization. His Lovborg is weak, sulky, and scarcely more worthy of Hedda's interest than Tesman. His only intensity comes in response to Hedda's baiting, and he conveys it as a kind of impotent...