Theatre review: Hedda

Tanika Gupta throws Ibsen's proto-sociopath Hedda Gabler into a blender with the real-life story of silent screen star Merle Oberon, an Anglo-Indian woman who passed for white to make it in Hollywood, not being found out until after her death. In Hedda the title character is the daughter of a British General during the Raj and his Indian servant, who's bought her way out of a studio contract at great expense after becoming fed up with their control over her. In 1948 the War is over and India has been partitioned and given independence, and Hedda (Pearl Chanda) has just married her third (or possibly fourth) husband George Tesman (Joe Bannister,) a minor film director who's had to go into significant debt to keep his glamorous new wife in the style she's become accustomed to. This includes employing Rina Fatania's Shona, the maid who's been with Hedda all her life because she is, of course, actually her mother.

George has high hopes of a new project helping with their financial difficulties, but when producer John Brack (Milo Twomey) arrives he reveals that a forgotten screenwriter has reappeared with a new script so good, he may have to put George's film on the back burner and make that instead.

It's also bad news for Hedda because Leonard (Jake Mann) is a childhood friend of hers, also mixed-race and hitherto concealing it, and his big comeback idea is a story clearly modelled on Hedda's own, that would likely blow her secret if it was ever made. So Gupta has given Hedda a sympathetic backstory that puts the audience in a quandary when she quickly reveals just how vicious she can be.

So she's casually cruel to George's aunt Julia (Caroline Harker) just for her own amusement, before smilingly undermining Alice (Bebe Cave,) the young actress having an affair with the writer. Leonard himself is the target of much of her manipulation, and the way she gets the recovering alcoholic to fall off the wagon is only the start of the extraordinary self-destructive acts she demands of him.

This is by some way the shortest take on Hedda Gabler I've seen so far, and I imagine it'll come in for stick from some quarters for not delving into quite as deep psychological waters as it might have done. But I do think the new context Gupta has placed the character in gives us a different interpretation of at least some of her actions, and while it might not inspire quite so many critical essays as a more ponderous production, the energy director Hettie Macdonald has given it definitely captures that thriller feel.

Chanda is an actor whose work I've enjoyed for some years so it's good to see her get to play such an iconic role, and she's certainly a large part of what works here - she really gets her teeth into Hedda's gleeful cruelty, but then brings us right back in emotionally as she realises events have taken a turn her manipulations can't get her out of this time. Although part of me felt Hedda didn't quite dig that deep, for the most part I appreciated the ride, as well as the opportunity to find out the wild truth behind an early movie star whose name I was only vaguely familiar with.

Hedda by Tanika Gupta after Henrik Ibsen is booking until the 22nd of November at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.