THREE STARS
Meriwether’s multithreaded, gleefully meta critique of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler concerns Jane, a depressed, pregnant present-day housewife who’s disappeared from her house; her daughter, Nugget, who delivers a school report on Ibsen’s work (“Well Made Play, question mark?”); Jane’s husband, Rick, and his loose-cannon brother, Cubby, who hire a film student to help sell their story to the networks; and the sexually repressed Ibsen himself, facing off against his hostile wife and archrival playwright August Strindberg.
It’s a lot to process, and that’s even before we get to the robots. Jane’s been kidnapped, you see, by sentient robots, who transport her to the Ecuadorean “robotforest” and demand that she play Hedda for them. Sideshow offers what might be the ideal production of this material, with remarkably sophisticated robot actors matching up to a thoroughly grounded performance by Nina O’Keefe as Jane; in addition, Lisi Stoessel’s set provides one of the most satisfying reveals you’ll see all year. But with so many competing, jokey narratives, it’s hard to shake the sense Meriwether’s got too many tongues in her cheek.