After the Broadway premiere of Hedda Gabler in 1902, one reviewer wrote of its extraordinary heroine: ‘Degenerate, selfish, morbid, cruel, bitter, jealous, something of a visionary, something of a lunatic.’

Hedda Gabler is trapped inside a conventional life: she married the scholar George Tesman. But money is short, Tesman’s old rival Ejlert Lövborg has turned up again, Judge Brack is visiting with alarming regularity, and Hedda Gabler’s volcanic boredom is reaching its limits. So begins a dangerous game of finding purpose in a purposeless existence.

Belvoir’s Resident Director Adena Jacobs has an uncanny ability to uncover the torrents of instinct that run beneath the routines of modern living. Ash Flanders is a man who has made an artform out of playing tragic heroines.

Their Hedda Gabler is a primal close-up of Ibsen’s electrifying marriage tragedy.