"Hedda Gabler" Pilch.

This is the second time I’ve seen Patrick Marber’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. The first was in its original London run at the National Theatre in 2016, when it came across as a disappointingly stillborn affair. This was due less to Marber’s script and more to the deliberately pedestrian pace and design of the performance. Prophetically, the Guardian review at the time ended, ‘It is a version that will have a life beyond this production’.

How right they were.

Lydia Free and Coco Cottam’s sparkling interpretation at The Pilch keeps the ironically clean white set of Ivo van Hove’s original. But it diverges by having all the characters behave like three-dimensional beings rather than strangely muted ciphers. As a result, this feels like a truly updated Hedda Gabler: one in which the social coercion, motiveless malignity, sexual suggestiveness and urge for freedom through destruction feel recognisably unnerving and contemporary.

Hedda herself is a fascinating character. Her barely-contained irritation at the petit-bourgeois meaninglessness that surrounds her, her desire to destroy that world in the name of aesthetic beauty – whilst at the same time glorying in gossip and social one-upmanship – are bewitchingly inconsistent. In Rosa Calcraft this production has a Hedda who embodies all of the character’s contradictions, but also brings out a rich seam of comedy. She is forever adding cutting asides to overheard conversations, or stopping her husband Jorgen short with a snappy, ‘I heard’. At one point she snaps, ‘Don’t be wet!’ and it’s a jab that comes back to haunt her later in one of this production’s most disturbing knife-twists, as Judge Brack literally drenches her in the final scene to demonstrate his power.

Luke Nixon breathes lustful life into Brack, finding a degree of terrifying, light-hearted lasciviousness that lay buried in Ibsen’s original, waiting balefully to be unearthed. He is like a Norwegian Addison Dewitt, toying with Hedda’s Margo Channing. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I envy you. Watch All About Eve immediately.)

The set is dominated by a living-room window hung between the cast and the audience. It’s such a simple device, but it generates a constant sense of snooping, peering in on secrets and confidences that fuel the social anxiety of the play. One scene in particular takes place entirely in silhouette behind the living-room wall (a curtain), and it feels almost transgressive to eavesdrop on the conversation.

In this production everyone gets a chance to shine. Jo Rich as Jorgen does an almost unbearably David-Brentish dance of delight when he learns of his impending fatherhood. Rosie Owen as Thea evinces such honest brightness and sincerity you just know she’s ripe for exploitation. Tom Baker as Eilert is the perfect guy who doesn’t have to try too hard, and Yasmin Nachif in the slightly thankless role of Berte still somehow manages to occupy the moral centre of this damaged community. As she slowly drew the curtains on the tragic ending, it truly felt like each slow dusk was a drawing down of blinds.

Hedda’s ultimate desire (talking about death) is, ‘Do it beautifully’. With this show, Peach Productions have fulfilled her wish.