Two Heddas

Henrik Ibsen's .Hedda Gabler is, as her many admirers know, "about twenty-nine . . . a woman of breeding and distinction. Her complexion is pale and opaque-her eyes, steel gray, express a cold unruffled repose. Her hair is an agreeable medium brown, not particularly abundant. She is dressed tastefully in a somewhat loose-fitting morning gown."

This Ibsen girl, as the glum apothecary of Grimstad made her, is a relentless person, chilled of blood, chiseled of expression. She marries George Tesman because, as she reluctantly admits, her day is done. Tesman, an ultimate conception of the paperbound pedagog, is counting upon a professorship to offset Hedda's extravagances, when he learns that Eilert Lovborg, his onetime friend, has renounced debauchery, published a history of civilization, and may be regarded as a competitor for the professorship. Lovborg, however, reassures George that he is satisfied with his moral victory over vicious diversion.

Hypersensitive Hedda resents Lovborg's success. Once her lover, he has turned to stupid little Mrs. Elvstead, who discusses him maternally with Hedda. Jealous, Hedda makes Lovborg believe that Mrs. Elvstead has lost faith in him. He gets drunk, loses the manuscript of his second book. When he comes to her, Hedda gives him a pistol and the injunction to use it "beautifully." He uses it, not beautifully, and Hedda soon destroys herself.

Last week in Manhattan, two seasoned actresses undertook Hedda Gabler, in different theatres, simultaneously. Admirers of the two ladies, as well as Hedda's friends, sped back and forth, uptown and downtown, to compare and contrast the performances of Actresses Eva Le Gallienne and Blanche Yurka. It was unfortunate and misleading, for the Misses Le Gallienne and Yurka have scarcely anything except their sex and profession in common. But between them they allowed the coincidence to happen and, with the public still craving Ibscenities as an aftermath of last year's Ibscentennial, comparisons and contrasts were inevitable. For example: Eva Le Gallienne's figure is lissom; it permits her to play Peter Pan. It is im portant and eloquent in the theatre; she and her Civic Repertory Theatre en able the penurious to see good plays, no claptrap. Of more importance in the specific case of Hedda Gabler, her figure has no voluptuousness to soften the cruelty of the character. She can wear with grace the smock-like robe pre scribed by Ibsen, Never without a cigaret, the Le Gallienne Hedda is bored but thinly vital as though blood of ice were quickening her movements, thoughts, words.

The Le Gallienne enunciation is crisp, precise. Her sarcasm is spat out with a spasmodic languor.

Blanche Yurka is tall, almost burly. As the placid wife of improvidential Hjalmar Ekdal in The Wild Duck she filled an ample role to which her body, her accomplishments and her God better suit her than the tense thing to which she has tried to suit herself in Hedda Gabler. She gives a certain effect of languor, but it is the languor, not of a bitter neurotic, but of a temporarily awakened marble slowly reverting to stone.

The Yurka voice has a drifting sadness not in keeping with a woman who hands her onetime lover the pistol with which to kill himself. Healthy Miss Yurka, if she would play heartless Hedda, needs to contract perspicacious anemia.