High society in 1950s Britain is the setting in which Tessa Thompson’s free-spirited but manipulative Hedda marries for money. Cue jaded pleasure and absurdity
N
ia DaCosta, known for her satirical horror Candyman from 2021, has now created an exotic melodrama; it is ridiculous, intense, despairingly sexual, inspired by Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Chekhov’s dictum about the gun produced in act one. It’s a feverish variation on a theme, with twists on gender and racial difference.
The action is transplanted from Ibsen’s Norway to a country estate in 1950s England, which makes for some suitably bizarre cod-British voice work – although the excellent Kathryn Hunter has one resoundingly authentic speech as Bertie, a punk Mrs Patmore figure below stairs, cheerfully pouring scorn on her employers in the vast Downtonesque establishment.
Hedda is played by Tessa Thompson as a sensual free spirit with a manipulative streak; she has just cynically settled for marriage to well-born milquetoast academic George Tesman (Tom Bateman) because it will allow her to live in luxury in this huge house in which they are throwing a colossally decadent party. But the awful truth is that George has mortgaged himself up to the eyeballs for this place – so he simply must get a lucrative, newly vacant professorship to pay the debt.
