Queering Hedda Gabler feels completely natural. In Harriet Madeley’s modern-day adaptation, Hedda’s sexuality expands our understanding of story and character, offering a new explanation for her boredom with her wannabe-writer husband George (an affable, clueless Mark Desebrock) and creating a fresh intensity for her relationship with Isla (the character rewritten from Eilert, a layered and confident performance from Jessica Temple), with whom Hedda shares a secret past.
What struggles to breathe as easily in this new production is the text itself. The dialogue hides nothing, with emotions sitting right on the surface. This creates performances that are too broad for this nuanced story, grins too wide and voices too loud for a work of realism in which feelings should simmer before boiling over. Here, every resentment is on display from the start, which creates a sense of flattening throughout.
