Artistic Home’s “Hedda Gabler,” with Brookelyn Hébert and John Mossman/Photo: Joe Mazza

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There’s much to say about The Artistic Home’s potent if occasionally wobbly version of “Hedda Gabler,” Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 domestic tragedy, directed by Monica Payne. But what should be emphasized straight off is that the play’s title character has long been considered one of the theater’s meatiest parts, and that Brookelyn Hébert’s portrayal of Ibsen’s celebrated femme fatale is an old-school, eyeball-grabbing star turn, one that every theater lover will relish.

Hébert gets at the tiger-like ferocity of Hedda, her scary lack of inhibition and empathy. As a sadist, Hedda is aroused by the thought of inflicting and witnessing pain; as an aesthete, she conflates suffering and death with beauty. Equipped with the two pistols she inherited from her army general father, she pits her indomitable will and animal cunning against her female rivals and male pursuers, who are attracted to her beauty and aura of risk and danger. Hébert skillfully shows us how Hedda instantly intuits the weaknesses of others and reshapes herself to mirror their fears or desires. Underneath is a malevolence reminiscent of Iago, but more impulsive. With her tight smile, flashing eyes and jagged, nervous movements, Hébert gives us an electric Hedda, whose charm conceals something primal, untamed and more than a touch demonic. She’s as far from the Victorian ideal of true womanhood as one could possibly get.

But as a nineteenth-century female, domesticity is Hedda’s lot. As the play opens, Hedda, the pampered only child who grew up riding horses and shooting guns with her father, has just returned from a long, less-than-thrilling honeymoon with her decent but dull husband Tesman, a historian who seeks a professorship at a Norwegian university. Tesman—who has staked his career on a painfully detailed study of “the domestic crafts of medieval Belgium”—has a rival, Ejlert, a more talented but less sober scholar who has long carried a torch for Hedda. In love with Ejlert, in this typically tangled Ibsen storyline, is meek Thea, a childhood acquaintance of Hedda, who at school would threaten to set her hair on fire. Thea has left her much older husband and followed Ejlert into the city to make sure he doesn’t return to his old, carousing ways. Also fluttering moth-like around the dazzling Hedda is the jaded Judge Brack, who enjoys “triangular situations” with married women and declares that selflessness “is a concept I rather doubt the existence of.”

Over the course of the play’s two-day time span, Hedda wreaks every variety of havoc. A woman of vast but blocked energy, she sows chaos to alleviate her boredom, at one point committing an act so heinous that, even though it’s telegraphed, still makes one gasp. Disaster begets catastrophe, until the old judge, himself no saint, blurts out, “Good God! People don’t do such things!” People may not, but Hedda—a twisted free spirit whose only rule is to do as she pleases—does.

Artistic Home’s “Hedda Gabler,” with Brookelyn Hébert /Photo: Joe Mazza

In a show of sisterly sympathy, director Payne describes Hedda in the show’s press release as not merely a victim of patriarchy, but almost as a role model for oppressed womanhood: “A woman in a loveless marriage, wanting to break free from society’s rigid, brutal expectations. Hedda is bold, strong-willed, and unable to bear the small life that she is required to live.” Everyone is entitled to their interpretation of an iconic figure like Hedda Gabler, but this reading strikes me as not only dubious but disrespectful. Her marriage to the doting Tesman is loveless in only one direction, and she feels bound to no one’s expectations but her own. Hedda would likely aim those pistols of hers at anyone who dared suggest she’s a victim, because one cannot be victimized by one’s inferiors, which to Hedda means all of humanity. Unlike Ibsen’s earlier “Ghosts” or “A Doll’s House,” “Hedda Gabler” doesn’t blame society for the protagonist’s chronic unhappiness. It’s something deep inside Hedda, a revulsion against the very idea of rules and order. As with Nietzsche, whose ideas may have been known to Ibsen, she divides the world not between the conventionally good and bad, but rather between the strong and the weak.

Fortunately, Hébert’s performance is all aggression, as it should be. Her Hedda is the victimizer, not the victim, until her destructive force becomes self-consuming. Hébert is capably supported by Todd Wojcik as her nebbishy, uxorious husband; the ever-reliable John Mossman as the louche Judge Brack, who always enters via the back door because he finds sneakiness stimulating; and Dan Evashevski as the dashing, Byronic Ejlert, who shares Hedda’s enthusiasm for self-destruction. Ariana Lopez never quite finds her footing in the part of the passive, socially insecure Thea. Lynne Baker and Laura Coleman round out the cast as, respectively, Tesman’s altruistic, good-natured aunt and the family maid.

Designer Kevin Hagan has taken full advantage of the unusually proportioned ground-floor space at the Den Theatre, crafting a telescoping set that’s deeper than it is wide, giving the sense that the characters are always emerging from or disappearing into an abyss. Costumer Rachel Lambert has created a magnificent gown for Hedda, bringing out her regal bearing. The other nineteenth-century garb is generally convincing, with one notable exception: Judge Brack is wearing a large, conspicuous wristwatch, rather than a period-appropriate pocket watch. It’s a minor detail, but one that should have been caught. Also occasionally and regrettably anachronistic is Mark O’Rowe’s updated script, which contains some naughty words that the proudly upper-crust Hedda is not likely to have picked up in finishing school.

A bigger problem is the stepped-on lines and awkward pauses that occurred repeatedly here, especially in the early scenes. The show felt somewhat under-rehearsed, but the timing should tighten up over the course of the run.

None of this detracts from Brookelyn Hébert’s memorable, no-nonsense performance. Her Hedda, she makes clear, is addicted to evil and hasn’t a kind bone in her body. She represents the moment when the romantic notion of the emancipated individual, free from social or religious constraint, becomes poisonous, pointing the way toward the horrors of the twentieth century. At a time when our own society, at least at its governing level, seems to have shaken loose of any sense of limits or shared moral code, Hedda’s overwhelming cruelty and palpable death wish are like an alarm bell in the night.

The Artistic Home’s “Hedda Gabler” has been extended through March 30 at the Den Theatre, 1331 North Milwaukee. Showtimes are Thursday-Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $35 general, $20 students/seniors, available at thedentheatre.com or by phone at (773)697-3830.