The clench of a gun feels genuinely dangerous in Nina Segal’s sharp, twisting story of coercive control and the slippery business of pretending for a living – a co-production between the Rose theatre and the Norwegian Ibsen Company. Knowledge of Ibsen’s original may add extra layers to this clever play but it isn’t required in the slightest to enjoy the aching tension and delicious absurdity of Jeff James’s immensely confident production.
In Norway, a film crew is shooting a movie adaptation of Hedda Gabbler. Antonia Thomas is wonderfully believable as a messed-up former child star escaping her life to play Hedda. Lurking close by is demanding auteur director Henrik (a brilliantly creepy Christian Rubeck). Ever watchful, Henrik pushes the cast deep into discomfort, until the lines between their real lives and their characters’ are blurred, and the play asks how much a performance should demand of a person. “I don’t believe you,” Henrik tells Hedda. Acting is not enough for him. It needs to feel real.
There is a brilliant tinge of uncanny throughout, as if the saturation levels are constantly being increased. Rosanna Vize’s stage depicts a film set sliced open, cement walls interrupted by green-screen hunks and film-strip mirrors. A model box sits in the corner; every element of design is a constant reminder of the alien unreality of their world.
Rarely off stage, the actors lurk around the edges, waiting to submit to Henrik’s invasive demands. The entire cast pulse with nervous, violent energy. Avi Nash is beautifully vulnerable as a one-year-sober movie star; Anna Andresen is etched with worry as the put-upon camera operator; and Matilda Bailes lends eerie comic relief with the child-like seriousness with which she plays an utterly unprofessional on-set therapist. Perhaps most brilliantly dislikeable is Joshua James’s Jørgen, Hedda’s gentle, undesired husband, consumed by Henrik’s cruelties and eager to create more of his own.
If the second half of the show isn’t quite as tight as the first, it still pushes bold, inventive ideas that keep every moment feeling frantically alive. Challenging the patriarchal power structures that the movie industry thrives on, and making creatives so rich they cannot be questioned, Shooting Hedda Gabler is a piercing, stylish reinvention of Ibsen’s classic. Watching it feels like licking a live wire.
• At Rose theatre, Kingston, until 21 October
