Theatre Review: Hedda Gabler - Abbey Theatre, Dublin

3/5

Despite the play’s renown, the lead protagonist in Henrik Ibsen’s famous play has always been far more intriguing than the play itself. Hedda Gabler, a woman bristling with life but confined by her 19th century patriarchal world, is the Freudian death drive incarnate - a destructive, heartbreaking figure every bit as complex and as melancholy as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The play’s remaining characters, however, are far less imaginatively drawn. They are mere ‘types’, pawns to be moved around the stage. Nevertheless, they can be energised, made more complex, or at the very least made much more ‘fun’. Whether it’s down to Mark O’Rowe’s script or Annabelle Comyn’s direction, that possibility is never developed here and the play suffers for it.