The muscle of Tanika Gupta’s adaptation lies in Hedda’s newly-written secret. Ibsen’s classic is transposed to the world of filmmakers and movie stars in London, 1948, with tea dresses, pencil moustaches, and India freshly independent. A solid, forthright reimagining, Gupta’s Hedda illuminates the racism of middle-class, postwar England, where a casual slur is no more noted in conversation than a polite sneeze.
A movie star in early retirement, our white-passing, hard-hearted Hedda (Pearl Chanda) hides her dual Anglo-Indian heritage. In a period of institutionalised racism in the film industry, with the segregation of love stories onscreen, she knows the discovery of her identity will destroy her carefully curated life. Directed by Hettie Macdonald, the play’s careless characters make the consequences of such a reveal plain in the way they talk about Shona (Rina Fatania, piercing and exact), Hedda’s maid, as if she is hardly there. Not even Hedda’s hapless husband George (Joe Bannister) suspects Hedda’s true relationship with the older woman, an inspired pairing that longs for more time on stage.
