Hedda
2025
***
Director: Nia DaCosta
Cast: Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nicholas Pinnock, Nina Hoss, Finbar Lynch, Mirren Mack, Jamael Westman, Saffron Hocking, Kathryn Hunter
Hedda feels trapped in her privileged but suffocating life as the wife of a debt-ridden academic. She hosts a lavish party where long-repressed desires and resentments come to the surface. Nia DaCosta's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's 1891 play Hedda Gabler is set in 1950s England, but its views on racial diversity and sexual identity feel distinctly contemporary. This stagy but good-looking drama is well-acted and nicely directed. However, as Hedda sabotages her former lover and seemingly everyone around her, her motives are not always easy to understand or accept.
