The world turns, and thus we now have Lily Allen as Hedda Gabler, one of theatre’s seminal roles for women. This proposition is not quite as unlikely as it might have been a handful of years ago, given that Allen gave a remarkable account of herself in her 2021 stage debut, 2.22 A Ghost Story. Her follow-up performance in Martin McDonagh’s bleakly challenging The Pillowman was less of a success, but she’s back for a third collaboration with director Matthew Dunster, who has also written this modern adaptation – Hedda – of Ibsen’s 1891 masterpiece.
Dunster performs a highly faithful transposition of the plot into the contemporary world, which means that Allen’s Hedda remains the bored new wife of decent but dull academic George (Ciarán Owens), who still cannot quite believe this aloof and previously much sought-after woman agreed to marry him. They have just returned from a five-month honeymoon, which appears to have lit not one single spark of joy or affection in Hedda, and are now living beyond their means in Hedda’s supposed “dream” house.
Hedda, you see, came from money – in a crafty nod to Allen’s musical hinterland, Hedda’s late father was the boss of a record label – but it’s all gone now and she is “partied out, danced out”. She has no desire to work and the smitten George has promised to provide for her.
Allen’s Hedda is as coldly stylish as the minimalist wood-panelled living room and there’s a chilly thrill to be had in watching her literally recoil from the warm chatter of George’s doting Aunt Julia (Imogen Stubbs). There are dark hints of a past sexual relationship with her godfather, MP David Brack (Brendan Coyle, best known as Mr Bates in Downton Abbey), whose smoothly controlling charm does not bode well for marital harmony. When Hedda’s old school frenemy Taya (Julia Chan) arrives in distress, Hedda’s toxic spirit of mischief leads to devastating consequences.
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If Allen’s performance initially errs on the side of blankness rather than interiority, it later shades into something considerably more interesting and becomes a furious portrait of the self-loathing of depression, and its insidious inclination towards self-sabotage. Elegantly trapped and finding no purpose in her own life, Hedda wants to rip apart everyone else’s happiness and ambition, especially the vulnerable Taya’s.
Taya is, apparently, a recovering addict, who used to visit “crack dens in rural Somerset”, and it’s as the play snakes towards its tragic finale that Dunster’s over-faithful adaptation begins to show its cracks and limitations. Who takes an un-backed-up laptop on a stag night? Can a modern-day mortgage really involve so many contributing parties? Even so, these flaws cannot derail Ibsen’s grim momentum and both Hedda and Allen are a picture of desolation come the end.
To 23 August, Theatre Royal Bath (01225 448844, theatreroyal.org.uk)
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