IT was an A Level text I’d managed to dodge as a teen. But plenty of English and Drama students will have read and seen Ibsen’s depressing masterpiece Hedda Gabler.
Running at Northampton’s Royal & Derngate as the final installment in artistic director Laurie Samsom’s Festival of Chaos trilogy, this is a stark departure from the larger-than-life offerings of The Bacchae and Blood Wedding.

A new, stripped-down cast of seven take to the beautifully lit, impressive but stark stage which stays static in the stifling drawing-room of the newly-wed Hedda, nee Gabler, now Mrs Tesman, in 1890s Oslo.

We’re introduced to her puppyish dolt of a husband, Jorgen (Jack Hawkins) and the obligitory overbearing aunt (Sue Wallace) while tutting servant Berte (Janice McKenzie), makes her mark with a scattering of lines.

The sets are muted and the dialogue conventional until the malevolently bored Hedda (an astonishing performance by Emma Hamilton) appears, displaying the nonchalant rudeness of the spoiled little rich girl.

Utterly frustrated by the…