Tanika Gupta’s Hedda is a bold and intelligent reimagining of Ibsen’s classic, relocated to post-war London in 1948, a city still haunted by the fading empire. Here, Hedda (Pearl Chanda) is a retired Anglo-Indian film star, twice or thrice divorced, the daughter of a white English general and his Indian mistress, Shona (Rina Fatania). Her mother, still posing as Hedda’s maid, conceals their true relationship even from George Tesman (Joe Bannister), her unsuspecting husband. Concealment becomes a way of life: Hedda is trapped within her own performance of whiteness, glamour, and control.
The title of this adaptation — simply Hedda — is telling. The omission of “Gabler” feels deliberate, as though this Hedda cannot claim her father’s name or any stable lineage. Within the play, she is referred to as “Hedda Gabler, the famous actress,” yet the absent surname in the title quietly exposes the fracture at the centre of her identity: a woman suspended between two worlds, belonging to neither.
Drawing inspiration from the life of Hollywood actress Merle Oberon, who famously hid her mixed-race heritage during the Hays Code era, Gupta reframes Ibsen’s study of repression through race and post-colonial identity. As she notes in the programme, Hedda is “a woman trying to understand herself but actually feels like she’s lying about her identity — and it’s driving her mad.” The play explores how the lies that enable survival can also corrode the soul.
Simon Kenny’s set — a white Chelsea flat of minimalist chic — evokes both luxury and sterility. The monochrome palette and the small metal heater used to burn Leonard’s manuscript symbolise the world’s obsession with purity and the quiet fires of denial.
Joe Bannister gives the evening’s strongest performance. His George Tesman, now a rising British film director rather than an academic, is warm, intelligent, and sincere. This very decency weakens Hedda’s despair; it feels imposed rather than inevitable. Rina Fatania’s Shona, formidable and morally rigid, exerts authority from the margins. After Leonard’s death, John Brack (Milo Twomey) learns from him the truth of Hedda’s mixed heritage, gaining power through knowledge, though the emotional tension between them never quite ignites.
Caroline Harker’s Aunt Julia offers the production a humanising presence. Affectionately called “Auntie Julie,” she brings warmth, good humour, and the hope of domestic continuity — her quiet wish that her nephew will soon have a child. She is the emotional counterpoint to Shona, the “maid” who is in fact Hedda’s mother. Where Aunt Julia exudes kindness and maternal concern, Shona is contained, practical, and emotionally distant. Only once does she betray her true feelings — when Hedda, having fallen asleep on the sofa, is gently covered by her mother, who passes a hand tenderly over her daughter’s head. It is a fleeting moment of intimacy in a world otherwise ruled by pretence and control.
Pearl Chanda’s Hedda, while poised and intelligent, remains curiously opaque. She is a woman in search of identity, torn between the wish to disclose her heritage and her mother’s stern warnings of the consequences. Chanda captures the confusion and brittleness, but the emotional leap from frustration to self-destruction feels unearned. It is difficult to believe that this Hedda — driven by ambivalence rather than despair — would shoot John Brack and then herself.
Gupta’s adaptation is intellectually ambitious, layering questions of race, class, and concealment atop Ibsen’s original psychology. Yet the accumulation of secrets — Hedda’s concealed parentage, her mother’s disguise, Leonard’s parallel story, and Brack’s discovery — risks making the narrative feel over-engineered. The emotional thread sometimes gets lost amid the architecture of ideas, leaving the audience admiring the play’s intellect rather than feeling its pulse.
The production’s final tableau — Hedda shooting Brack, then herself, as her mother pleads, “Hedda, don’t do it!” — is visually striking but theatrically abrupt. The moment is bold, yet emotionally underpowered. The more one reflects on the production, the clearer it becomes that this Hedda fails to generate the complex inner world that makes Ibsen’s heroine so dangerous and compelling. What should be a portrait of brilliance curdling into despair feels instead like a study of restlessness and restraint.
Despite its shortcomings, Hedda remains an absorbing evening — intelligent, elegant, and conceptually rich, even if it engages the mind more than the heart.
At the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond
By: Tanika Gupta
Inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
Director : Hettie Macdonald
Cast: Pearl Chanda, Joe Bannister, Bebe Cave, Rina Fatania, Caroline Harker, Jake Mann, and Milo Twomey
Until 22 November 2025
Photo credit: Helen Murray