Hedda Gabler review

Director Annie Kershaw’s production struggles to maintain focus and shoehorns in unnecessary theatrical devices that distract. Whispered truths are delivered through handheld mics, and Amy Watts’ bemusing set design inhibits the action more than it enhances it. The platform staging might suggest an island where Hedda feels marooned, but the plastic sheeting simply looks like they’ve got the builders in. Perhaps it’s intended to reflect Hedda’s discomfort – nobody, though, looks at ease in the space. Yet Kershaw does summon a growing sense of foreboding, the production alternating between laughter and rippling tension as the play builds to its ugly climax. This is helped enormously by Jamie Lu’s eerie sound design, which pulses surreptitiously beneath the dialogue.

Anna Popplewell’s Hedda is manipulative, cruel and spoiled, slinking around like a caged panther. The Chronicles of Narnia actor captures Hedda’s cool disdain, but for all her subverted queer rage, it’s a struggle to sympathise with her, even when she is cornered. Our sympathies lie with everybody else, especially Natalie Perera, awkward but determined as Hedda’s old school friend Thea, and Jessica Temple’s nicely measured take on the tortured genius Isla. Mark Desebrock may get plenty of laughs – perhaps too many – as the academic mummy’s boy George, with an underlying air of entitlement that rightly fuels Hedda’s contempt. Ryan Gerald as George’s friend and publisher has a slightly more sinister edge and seems only too willing to expose some of Hedda’s darkest secrets.

In all, Madeley has thrown lots of great ideas at her reimagining – but not all of them quite come off.