Hedda Gabler

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Play Opened 27 May 2005, Closed 6 August 2005

Duke of York's Theatre St Martin's Lane, London

"Sexy and electrifying - Hedda Gabler lives" The Daily Telegraph

Arriving home after an extended honeymoon Hedda Gabler struggles with an existence that is, for her, devoid of excitement and enchantment. Filled with a passion for life that cannot be confined by her marriage of 'perfect home', Hedda strives to find a way to fulfil her desires by manipulating those around her...

Eve Best and Iain Glen lead the cast as Hedda Gabler and Judge Brack, with Benedict Cumberbatch as George Tesman, Lisa Dillon as Thea Elvsted, Sarah Flind as Berthe, Gillian Raine as Juliana Tesman and Jamie Sives as Eilert Loevborg.

"Superb cast and custom-built translation bring new life to an explosive Ibsen drama" The Independent

This production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, in a new version by Richard Eyre, opened at the Almeida Theatre to rave reviews at the beginning of March, with the entire season selling out immediately. Richard Eyre directs the play, with design by Rob Howell, lighting by Peter Mumford and sound by John Leonard.

"Miss Best is magnificent. It is really the most perfect performance" The Daily Mail

"Richard Eyre has drafted his own script for his keenly awaited production of Hedda Gabler... Eve Best is an outstanding, subtly intense actress. Her tall, raven-haired Hedda is a web of conflicting impulses: disdainfully cool and seething underneath, shockingly sadistic, desperately unhappy and ultimately sickened by her near-satanic destructiveness... Eyre also boldly breaks with Ibsen's rather decorous conclusion. The final gunshot is no longer offstage but visible, splattering blood over that delicate gauze. Hedda Gabler still has the power to shock." The Independent on Sunday

"The cast is superb" The Independent

"There's no ingratiation in Best's performance... You watch fascinated because of the lack of explanation: she is, it seems, nasty for the sheer hell of it. And this is true to Ibsen's play. Hedda Gabler, often spoken of as an issue play about women's rights, is actually far more peculiar. It is, as much as anything, an attack on the idea of charisma and celebrity... Without splashing innovations all over the place (he hasn't transplanted the whole thing to Kosovo or turned Hedda's admirer Judge Brack into a woman), Richard Eyre makes you see these things - by his new version and by his direction." The Observer

"This is a wonderful production of Ibsen’s magnificent play, and one that confirms Best as a truly great actress. Both Eyre's staging of his new version and the extraordinary central performance penetrate to the very heart of the play... An electrifying hit" The Daily Telegraph

"In Eyre's introduction to his dynamic new version, written from a literal translation, he talks of Best being 'born to play Hedda', and her performance certainly maps that theatrical genome with startling clarity... While Ibsen's play is often seen as sympathetic to the plight of women trapped by marriage and patriarchy. Best's performance is proof that Hedda is hardly a feminist martyr... When Hedda hears Loevborg has shot himself not through the head but through the heart, she whispers: 'The heart is good too.' Clear, exhilarating, sexually charged, this production hits the same targets with equal precision, as wild and shocking as blood splashed on suburban wallpaper." The Sunday Times

"Hedda Gabler, Ibsen's monstrous creation, is, it struck me in Richard Eyre's new production, drama's original Desperate Housewife. She's got her husband, she's got her house but she no identity of her own... Eve Best is marvellous. Tall, raven-haired, rosy-cheeked, there's something untamed about her. She strides untidily around the drawing room like a caged panther in a zoo, obviously unhappy but with no idea of what to do with herself... For once, in this beautifully balanced production, we see Hedda's plight with total clarity, as the victim of her own character as well as her environment." The Mail on Sunday

"Hedda is Hamlet for actresses, an opportunity for great artists to roll out their choicest mannerisms and overact like crazy. This is precisely what Eve Best does't do, and what makes her a most thrilling Hedda. For Best, less is more. She is young and authentically posh, and knows exactly how a Norwegian general's daughter would go about wrong-footing her husband's dowdy relations... There is not a weak link in the cast, and Richard Eyre's production, based on his own sharpening of the text, is an exercise in virtuoso stagecraft." The Sunday Telegraph

Henrik Johan lbsen was born in 1828 in Skien, a small town on the coast of Norway. His father was a merchant whose business failed, forcing the family to move to a farm in Gjerpen. Ibsen had hoped to become a physician but, after failing university entrance examinations, was appointed in 1851 as 'stage poet' of Den Nationale Scene, a small theatre in Bergen. There he wrote four plays based on Norwegian folklore and history, which failed to attract an audience. In 1852 the theatre sent him on a study tour to Denmark and Germany and in 1857, after the theatre went bankrupt, he returned to Christiania to become Artistic Director of the new Norske (Norwegian) Theatre. In 1864 lbsen received a grant for foreign travel from the Norwegian government which enabled him to visit Italy and Germany, and in 1864 he settled in Rome where he wrote his great poetic drama Brand. This made a reputation for him throughout Europe and earned him a state pension. Brand was followed by his last play in verse, Peer Gynt, written in 1867 and produced in a revised stage version, with incidental music by Grieg, in 1876. His following four plays are realistic portrayals of ageless and universal parochialism set in the small town life of Ibsen's own day: Pillars of Society (1877) is a study of public life based on a lie; A Doll's House (1879) of the insidious destruction of domestic life by another lie; Ghosts (1881) of the lingering poison in a marriage based on a lie; An Enemy of the People (1882) of a man of truth in conflict with the falsity of society. All four plays have the structural economy and simplicity of a skilled writer at the height of his powers and all, in thought and technique, have exercised an immense influence on the development of contemporary theatre. Ibsen's later plays, in which symbolism plays an increasingly large part, include The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), The Lady From the Sea (1888), Hedda Gabler (1890) and finally The Master Builder (1892), which is concerned with the dual nature of the man and the artist, Little Eyolf (1894), a study of marital relations, John Gabriel Borkman (1896), a study of unfulfilled genius in relation to society, and When We Dead Awaken (1899), Ibsen's last pronouncement on the artist's relation to life and truth. The last years of Ibsen's life were clouded by mental illness and he died in Christiania in 1906.