After what feels like an infinity of iterations of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, finding something genuinely new or interesting in it is a difficult feat. But it’s something that writer-director Tanika Gupta’s pulls off in her new take for the Orange Tree. She reimagines Ibsen’s restless anti-heroine as a mixed-heritage actress in postwar London, still suffocating under societal expectations, but now also constrained by race, class, gender, and reputation in a new Britain.
It is 1948. The Blitz scars are still visible, but a veneer of gentility has returned. Inside a pristine Chelsea mews house — Simon Kenny’s blinding white-on-white set is simple but effective — Hedda (Pearl Chanda) lives with her dependable new husband, George (Joe Bannister). Outwardly, she’s living the dream: a glamorous ‘retired’ film star, she’s still admired (and feared) for her beauty and clout. But beneath that polish, she’s suffocating — aching for the freedoms enjoyed by those around her.
Gupta’s inspiration comes from real-life film legend Merle Oberon, who famously concealed her South Asian heritage to survive Hollywood’s racist studio system under the Hays Code (the strict moral censorship guidelines that ruled American cinema until the late 1960s). That parallel gives Gupta’s Hedda a modern edge while retaining Ibsen’s familiar structure — the domestic cage, the manipulations, the doomed flirtations.
Around Hedda orbit familiar figures: Leonard (Jake Mann), the brooding playwright; John Brack (Milo Twomey), a slick producer; the eager and impressionable Alice Smith (Bebe Cave); and Aunt Julia (Caroline Harker), whose well-meaning chatter masks the genteel racism of the time. Each actor contributes a passionate performance — with every flicker of the eye, every nervous tug of a wristwatch. Director Hettie Macdonald’s in-the-round staging heightens this intimacy: the actors pace and circle one another beneath stark white light ready to politely spar or defend.
Cave and Chanda are particular standouts. Chanda’s Hedda begins the play seemingly in control, fracturing only when her appearance or poise is questioned. She embodies both the entitlement and fragility of her character’s predecessors, toying with those around her with languid amusement. Yet her cruelty — especially towards Leonard — can strain belief. When Chekhov’s proverbial gun finally goes off, it feels slightly rushed; one more emotional beat might have lent greater credibility.
Much of the play’s emotional weight comes from Hedda’s interactions with her ‘maid’, Shona (Rina Fatania). Their exchanges — sharp, tense, and revealing — suggest a complex, heartbreaking dynamic between the two. Yet it’s a thread that feels underdeveloped, one that might have added even more emotional depth to the production.
Still, Gupta’s additions to Ibsen’s sharp psychological study — layered with urgent questions of identity, power, and visibility in postcolonial Britain — are both memorable and timely, and a reminder of how slow, uneven, and fragile social change can be.
