IRELAND
Directed by Anna Mackmin
Set and Costume Designer Lez Brotherston
Lighting Design by Oliver Fenwick
Composer Denis Clohessy
Cast includes Susan Fitzgerald, Peter Hanly, Andrea Irvine, John Light and Justine Mitchell as Hedda
Eighty years after the Gate opened with Ibsen's Peer Gynt, it celebrates its birthday with a wonderful new version, by Brian Friel, of Ibsen's masterpiece Hedda Gabler. Idealistic heroine or manipulative villain, the character of Hedda is one of the great dramatic roles in theatre and has become known as the 'female Hamlet'.
As she struggles to come to terms with a marriage to a man she finds numbingly dull and a pregnancy that threatens to seize hold of her body and future, Hedda quickly realises that the roots of convention run deep and, aided and abetted by her predatory confidante, Judge Brack, begins to indulge in evil games, manipulating the fate of all who enter her orbit.
“There is no doubting we are in the thrall of as masterly a dramatist as the theatre possesses.” The Times
We Feel...
A new adaptation of Ibsen's masterpiece by one of the world's greatest living playwrights is a fitting way to acknowledge this great theatre's 80th anniversary.
