Hedda Gabler review – queer update of Ibsen’s intense story of desire

Reading Rep theatre
It makes sense to rethink the sexual currents running through the classic drama, but this version has lost the nuance it needs

Queering Hedda Gabler feels completely natural. In Harriet Madeley’s modern-day adaptation, Hedda’s sexuality expands our understanding of story and character, offering a new explanation for her boredom with her wannabe-writer husband George (an affable, clueless Mark Desebrock) and creating a fresh intensity for her relationship with Isla (the character rewritten from Eilert, a layered and confident performance from Jessica Temple), with whom Hedda shares a secret past.

What struggles to breathe as easily in this new production is the text itself. The dialogue hides nothing, with emotions sitting right on the surface. This creates performances that are too broad for this nuanced story, grins too wide and voices too loud for a work of realism in which feelings should simmer before boiling over. Here, every resentment is on display from the start, which creates a sense of flattening throughout.

Annie Kershaw’s direction attempts to draw out more in-depth character studies by having the cast dip out of scenes to speak into microphones, creating a sense of privacy away from the physical space they share. But rather than digging deeper into their dark secrets, these only offer us extra exposition.

Anna Popplewell is cruel and careless as our bored lead, spending her days swatting away her new husband like he’s a persistently buzzing fly. Languishing in a crumbling house of indeterminate age – they talk as if it is a period manor, but the pink carpet and dipped conversation pit feel decidedly 1970s – she waits for someone to entertain her, for someone new to control. The air changes when Isla walks in, and with George’s 15-year university reunion an opportunity for the cast to gather, Isla’s easily overturned sobriety is a simple slide into chaos.

The undercooked text and overdone performances may not reveal dizzying new depths of Ibsen’s 132-year-old text, but the consideration of these characters as queer demonstrates the value of continuing to adapt and stretch this story. When Popplewell’s stony Hedda looks at Temple’s Isla, it feels like the most obvious fact in the world that this story of heady intensity and obsession is written about one woman in love with another.

• At Reading Rep theatre until 11 March.

Contributor

Kate Wyver

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Hedda Gabler, This is Not a Love Story review – Hedda get your gun
As the heroine of Ibsen’s psychodrama, a pistol-packing Victoria Elliott rages against corseted constriction in Selma Dimitrijevic’s adaptation

Alfred Hickling

22, Feb, 2017 @12:50 PM

Article image
Hedda Gabler – review
Sheridan Smith's admirable performance is affected by the idea of a psychological double-Hedda, writes Michael Billington

Michael Billington

12, Sep, 2012 @11:42 PM

Article image
Hedda Gabler – review
The wonderful Emma Hamilton brings out Hedda's inner witch in this first-rate production, writes Michael Billington

Michael Billington

11, Jul, 2012 @4:33 PM

Article image
Ghosts review – Ibsen’s intense tragedy by candlelight
Joe Hill-Gibbins directs his own version of the psychodrama, creating a potent atmosphere with designer Rosanna Vize

Arifa Akbar

23, Nov, 2023 @5:32 PM

Hedda Gabler, Abbey, Dublin

Abbey, Dublin

Karen Fricker

03, Oct, 2006 @10:52 PM

Article image
Hedda Gabler | Theatre review
Farce has the upper hand over tragedy in this Ibsen adaptation, says Kate Kellaway

Kate Kellaway

07, Mar, 2010 @12:05 AM

Article image
Hedda Gabler, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

Lyn Gardner

24, Feb, 2006 @1:19 PM

Hedda Gabler, Perth Theatre

Perth Theatre

Mark Fisher

21, Apr, 2005 @10:21 AM

Article image
Hedda Gabler review – Ibsen’s odd couple caught in a twitchy, tense tragedy
Amanda Gaughan’s period production does fair justice to this after-party drama for a Macbeth-like couple

Mark Fisher

30, Mar, 2015 @12:10 PM

Article image
Hedda Gabler review – Ruth Wilson lets loose Ibsen's demons
Ruth Wilson superbly conveys the desolation of Ibsen’s ahead-of-her-time aesthete in Ivo van Hove’s invigorating modern-dress version

Michael Billington

13, Dec, 2016 @11:40 AM