‘A Dallas Hedda’ @ Bishop Arts Theatre
Photos by Taylor Staniforth / TayStan Photography
—Rickey Wax
You haven’t truly felt existential dread until you’ve seen a woman in a beige blouse attempt to outmaneuver God, academia, and the patriarchy—all before dinner. Franky D. Gonzalez’s A Dallas Hedda isn’t a retelling of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler; it’s a resurrection. Gonzalez, a Colombian American playwright and TV writer based in Dallas and Los Angeles, serves as the playwright-in-residence at Bishop Arts Theatre Center. Directed with razor-sharp emotional clarity by Sasha Maya Ada, this production lifts the bones of Ibsen’s 1890 bourgeois tragedy and dresses them in Texas linen and suburban tension, creating a story that feels as contemporary as it is eternal.
When Ibsen premiered Hedda Gabler in 1891, critics were unsettled by Hedda’s coldness and manipulative nature. She wasn’t “likable” (a descriptor still weaponized against women characters today). Gonzalez, thankfully, isn’t interested in whether we like Hedda. He’s interested in whether we see her—understand her suffocation and her flair for destruction—as something very American. Very Southern. And very real.
Set in a sterile North Dallas living room, the entire production hums with thematic design. The beige-on-beige palette isn’t just a visual choice—it’s a character in itself, a metaphor for the life Hedda (Haley Peters) has built in pursuit of social respectability. Garrett Brannan’s set design reinforces this rigorous aesthetic, while Kiera Powers’ costumes echo it beautifully: Hedda and George (Caleb Mosley) are dressed to blend in with their surroundings, projecting a false sense of calm that barely conceals their internal emptiness. By contrast, the artists—Elliot (Rodrigo Caraveo) and Talia (Carrie Viera)—arrive in bursts of color, disrupting the monotony with their authenticity and emotional urgency. Brock (Andrew Nicolas), ever the provocateur, appears in red and black—the devil’s advocate incarnate.
It’s a clever use of mise-en-scène that would make any design professor beam. Lighting designer Caroline Hodge takes things even further, using mood and emotion as cues for lighting shifts. When Hedda reclaims control—at moments of sharp focus or sudden resolve—the light cools to an icy white. It’s effective, and stunningly choreographed with the performances.
Gonzalez’s use of the French scene structure (popularized by Molière) elevates the pacing. Rather than shifting acts with blunt blackouts, the play pivots on who enters and exits a room—each arrival creating tension, each exit leaving a wound. It mirrors the emotional claustrophobia Hedda feels, captured with chilling clarity by Talia: “A predator who’s already trapped itself.”
The first image is unforgettable. Hedda, pre-marriage and pre-masquerade, dances in a North Dallas nightclub. She moves as if “the world turns to dust.” Beside her, George—awkward and overdressed—watches. Elliot, Hedda’s former flame, swirls with chaotic grace, already a ghost of self-destruction. It’s the only time we see Hedda unfiltered: alive, joyful, and free.
Now married to George—a hopeful academic at a conservative Christian college aiming to become its first tenured Black professor—Hedda is draped in repression. Their home, a beige tomb, is filled with things she didn’t ask for but now owns. George is loving, gentle, and in his own way, deeply disconnected. Their marriage—one of performance, race, reputation, and suppressed intimacy—drips with discomfort.
Hedda doesn’t seethe outwardly. She smiles. She jabs with words. “I didn’t think he’d actually go and buy the house,” she says about George’s impulsive decision. Even her compliments feel like veiled threats. Her disdain is aesthetic, racial, and spiritual. And yet, beneath the icy posture is a woman trying desperately to outrun a legacy she didn’t choose.
Elliot arrives in town, sober now, and a celebrated writer. But his presence unlocks Hedda’s true ambition—not romance, but control. Her seduction is psychological. She mocks his recovery. “Think I don’t see you looking at my glass of wine?” she quips.
Then, the emotional anchor drops: she reveals to Elliot that she had an abortion when he left her years ago. What might read as liberation is, in context, another performance. She terminated the pregnancy not for herself—but for her father’s reputation. “I protected his legacy,” she admits, echoing the pressure placed on her by the unseen but omnipresent ghost of a white, conservative patriarch who governed her life.
It’s here that Gonzalez folds in questions of gender, race, and reproductive autonomy with profound subtlety. Hedda is both oppressor and oppressed. Her whiteness, coupled with being the daughter of the college’s founder, affords her a level of social privilege few would dare challenge. But her womanhood chains her to the legacy of a man who, even in death, dictates her choices. In a Christian college where image is salvation, her body becomes a battleground.
Brock needles, Talia pleads, and Hedda plays puppet master. She toys with everyone—draining Elliot’s spirit, mocking Talia’s love, dismissing George’s dreams. “All work is political,” Talia says. “But it’s not just politics when it’s your people.” That line lands with the full weight of intersectional exhaustion.
Throughout this act, Hedda seems to be building toward something—final, elegant, and irreversible. And then… A man leaves the scene. A manuscript disappears. A legacy shatters. I won’t spoil the exact nature of Hedda’s final play, but know this: it’s a calculated act of destruction—cold, deliberate, and without apology.
Haley Peters is magnetic as Hedda (and let’s be honest—I love a good villain). She conducts the play’s emotional symphony with unnerving precision. Her subtext is palpable—often saying one thing while radiating something entirely different. She pushes and pulls at those around her with just enough tension to keep them close before cutting them loose. Peters weaponizes privilege, beauty, and inherited pain, shifting seamlessly between victim and villain.
Rodrigo Caraveo brings aching vulnerability to Elliot, channeling it most powerfully through his voice; he fully embodies the suffering artist archetype. His presence is quietly volatile. When he says, “Respira para respirar mañana” (“Breathe now. Breathe to breathe tomorrow. Breathe so that yesterday disappears. Breathe for any reason, but breathe.”), it lands like a prayer—a mantra for survival and a reckoning with everything he’s tried to outrun. The language is strikingly beautiful, one of many moments where Gonzalez’s writing cuts deep.
Carrie Viera’s Talia is the moral center of the play. The restraint she maintains—even in the most emotionally charged moments—is remarkable. Her physicality is strong yet guarded, and the slight cracking in her voice reveals just enough vulnerability to show that her tears, if they were to fall, would be an act of strength, not weakness.
Caleb Mosley delivers a deeply affecting performance as George, whose optimism and faith serve as both armor and blindfold. But in his final scene, when the truth lands and his voice finally hardens, he’s chilling. His earlier optimism—“Hedda believes what is necessary is the manifesting of the life we deserve”—comes back with bitter resonance.
And Andrew Nicolas as Brock? A scalpel disguised as a colleague. His dry wit and perfectly timed one-liners make him the play’s most unsettling mirror.
Ada directs with a the quiet promise that pain is coming. She doesn’t rush a single moment. Instead, she builds the tension in layers—quiet glances, carefully timed exits, and silences that scream.
At its core, Hedda is about the illusion of freedom—the curated lives people perform in Texas, where manners are a mask and reputation is religion. Gonzalez reframes Hedda Gabler through the lens of Southern politics, racial tension, gender dynamics, and the arts, weaving in a devastating commentary on privilege without a hint of didacticism. It’s earned. This new Hedda honors Ibsen’s original themes while dragging them into the complexities of today’s America.
To quote George: “The world’s sudden twists may be great, but my God is greater.”
So you’d better Hedda to this show (come on, that wordplay deserves a standing ovation) before it’s gone. This is not one you want to miss.
WHEN: May 1-May 11, 2025
WHERE: Bishop Arts Theatre Center, 215 S Tyler St, Dallas
WEB: bishopartstheatre.org
