Writer: Tanika Gupta
Director: Hettie Macdonald
Now sits expectation in the air. A new Tanika Gupta play always promises something thoughtful and original, even when, as she did in her version of The Doll’s House, she is reworking a famous classic. And this radical response to Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1891) more than fulfils those expectations.
It’s 1948, and we’re in a classy house in Chelsea. Film writer George Tesman (Joe Bannister) has just arrived to take possession of it with his world-famous film star wife, Hedda (Pearl Chanda), after a long honeymoon.
Chanda, whose naturalistic acting is very convincing, finds brittle vulnerability in troubled Hedda, who hides her confused feelings behind her cold, cutting manner. This Hedda has grown up in India, whose independence has just been agreed, and she is hiding her dual heritage (as Merle Oberon did in real life) because she fears it would make her unemployable. There is an even deeper, rather unexpected, secret in Hedda’s closet, which her fourth husband George, who thinks he’s the third, isn’t aware of. Ibsen and Gupta both make it subtly clear that she’s reluctantly pregnant, but there’s something else here as well – no spoilers.
The strong support cast includes Jake Mann as Leonard, the brilliant screenwriter with an alcoholic past and history with Hedda back in India. Milo Twomey gives us a suitably ruthless but superficially attractive film producer, John Brack, and Caroline Harker’s sad, earnest Aunt Julia is masterly.
The Orange Tree’s square theatre-in-the-round works well enough for this innovative play and ensures intimacy, although there are inevitable moments when, wherever you sit, you can’t see the face of the actor who is speaking and wish you could. Simon Kenny’s set includes a large, luxury-connoting white carpet, which the audience is asked to avoid walking on, and Hedda comments on it in the script. It would have been sensible to have made it slightly smaller (even 2 inches less all round) so that audience members could access the front row without touching it.
If a gun is mentioned in a play, it’s a certainty that it will eventually be fired. And, anyway, seasoned theatre goers know what happens at the end of Hedda Gabler. What Gupta does in the final moments of Hedda, however, is not quite what you’re expecting. It’s a neat way of keeping the audience on its toes, although it’s not quite clear why Hedda would do what she does here.
Nonetheless, this is a fast-paced, gripping two hours of theatre in which Gupta, once again, manages to entertain as well as ask difficult questions.
Runs until 22 November 2025
