Hedda Gabler (NHB Modern Plays)

Richard Eyre's high-profile adaptation of Ibsen's famous 'problem play' about a headstrong woman's determination to control those around her. Arriving home after an extended honeymoon, Hedda struggles with an existence that is, for her, devoid of excitement and enchantment. Filled with a passion for life that cannot be confined by her marriage or 'perfect home', Hedda strives to find a way to fulfil her desires by manipulating those around her. Richard Eyre's adaptation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler was premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2005. 'A triumph... Eyre's dialogue is forceful, clear, with just enough idiomatic dash' - Observer 'Hedda is often regarded as the female Hamlet. But Eyre reminds us that it is a great polyphonic play as well as a commanding title-role' - Guardian 'Hedda Gabler still has the power to shock' - Independent on Sunday 'thrilling... re-administers, as if for the first time, the devastating shock and the sheer affront of Ibsen's drama' - Independent

Born in Norway in 1828, Ibsen began his writing career with romantic history plays influenced by Shakespeare and Schiller. In 1851 he was appointed writer-in-residence at the newly established Norwegian Theatre in Bergen with a contract to write a play a year for five years, following which he was made Artistic Director of the Norwegian Theatre in what is now Oslo. In the 1860s he moved abroad to concentrate wholly on writing. He began with two mighty verse dramas, Brand and Peer Gynt, and in the 1870s and 1880s wrote the sequence of realistic 'problem' plays for which he is best known, among them A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler and Rosmersholm. His last four plays, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken, dating from his return to Norway in the 1890s, are increasingly overlaid with symbolism. Illness forced him to retire in 1900, and he died in 1906 after a series of crippling strokes.