Broadway is bringing us the perfect storm of three crazy women in one play: P.J. Harvey, Mary-Louise Parker and Hedda Gabler. Jim Farber reports that P.J. Harvey has written the score to director Ian Rick-son’s new production of “Hedda Gabler,” opening in New York this Sunday.
The score is reportedly based on the idea of a hiss – created with mashed up guitar feedback. Amazingly enough Harvey tells Faber, “I’ve wanted to do theater or film music since I first began writing music. I’ve just never been approached before.” Granted, Harvey does have a reputation for being a difficult and temperamental artist (or, if she were a man we’d probably say “particular and unpredictable”) but she seems from the interview to grasp the basic idea of bending her musical vision to work with that of the director and/or with the material. With the way Harvey’s musical output has been evolving in this particular decade alone we’d say she’s moving more and more towards the kind of ideal artist to score films, specifically those on the darker end of the spectrum.
Until such time as Christopher Nolan finds a nice, dark non-superhero film for Harvey to score you can catch “Hedda Gabler” and wait it out for her next album, which is to be released this spring.