Eve Best has appropriately won Best Actress for her leading role in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, which ran at the Almeida and the Duke Of York’s last year. Matthew Modine, currently starring in Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic, presented the award.
Richard Eyre’s production of Ibsen’s study of female sexuality starred Best as Hedda Tesman, a passionate woman struggling in a world which for her is devoid of excitement. Best played alongside Benedict Cumberbatch, and Lisa Dillon. The production ran at the Almeida in March and April before transferring to the Duke Of York’s in May, running until August last year.
Best beat off stiff competition to collect her award – she was nominated against Clare Higgins for Death Of A Salesman, Helen McCrory for As You Like It and Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter, both for Mary Stuart. But the win shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise as she picked up the same award at the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards announced at the end of January. However, she lost out to Harriet Walter in the Evening Standard Awards last year.
A fairly bemused and shocked Best came off stage clutching her new mantlepiece ornament and telling us that it was indeed a complete surprise. "I’m really freaked out. I was not expecting it. I just thought the others were so amazing. I’m rather confused!" she said.
After some thought as to why Hedda Gabler has received such a good response, Best surmised: "It’s a wonderful play and the way that Richard [Eyre] directed it was to bring out the play as it is without trying to have an angle on it or a slant and be as truthful to the play as possible."
The Hedda Gabler actress is a regular leading lady in London, particularly at the National – most recently in Howard Davies’s production of Mourning Becomes Electra, for which she again picked up the Critics’ Circle Best Actress Award.
Best received her award from Resurrection Blues star Matthew Modine, who joined his fellow Americans-in-London by proclaiming how wonderful our city is (as if we needed telling). "It's always exciting to come back to London, I love this place. Over the last 20 years I’ve probably been here five years. For a boy from Utah to come to London and work on a stage [at the Old Vic] that’s so historic – the person of the evening Laurence Olivier was the artistic director there for so many years – it's a tremendous honour."
CB
