Hedda Gabler - NT / UK tour.

Is the present NT cast completely different from the original New York cast? Or did some actors transfer to London? It's been recast once so why not again? I think this is about the most exciting and unexpected tour news for nearly ever.

Maybe it's better to bring a completely new set of actors to recreate Ivo van Hove's concept, instead of bringing back one or two of the previous cast? Does anyone know if any of the NT South Bank cast had played it in New York? Those three actors aren't "names" known to most people and the NT usually promotes its tours on the basis of the NT and not on the cast. Obviously we all want to see an able cast but I don't think it will matter to most people if there's a complete refresh. And a partial recast could unbalance people's reactions, with some audiences paying undue attention to the old hands.

Anyone else watch this with NT Live tonight? I thought it was good, although I didn't know anything about the play, but Ruth Wilson gave the ending away when she was on Graham Norton on Radio 2 the weekend, so it's a shame that I was watching it knowing what was coming up. But hey ho, I do like these NT live screenings, it's nice for people like me who don't live in London to see these productions, and it's probably not something I would make the effort to go and see live when there's so much other stuff on my list. And it is a National Theatre, so all credit to them for attracting people outside of London.

Agree with your Rafe Spall comment. He was appalling in it. And has been nominated for an Olivier now? So they've validated his OTT performance and bizarre physicality and shouting as something for performers to look up to? He and Chuk Iwuji really deflated the realism of the piece in the 2nd half.

I must admit when the cast was first announced I though Rafe Spall would be playing Tesman. I didn't mind him as Brack though.

I thought Rafe was great....scary at the end! Really enjoyed his performance!

Have they announced any NT live encores for this? (I'm being lazy about this but I do hate the NT live site...)

"Simplistic" is a much better way of describing his performance/the direction of his performance, I agree.

What David J says strikes me as right.

However, weirdly, I saw it yesterday and absolutely loved this show! For me, this was was a sardonic Hedda Gabler (Ruth Wilson) I liked, rather than merely felt empathy for, and it spoke to me today, right now, rather than have me nodding along sagely about how sexist the world used to be, the rather redundant exercise of most Hedda Gablers.

Van Hove's vision channels our Gogglebox world of social media users, enraged and engaged by things on the tv and the internet, yet powerless to actually affect the outcome. His set is a vast empty space, upon which people other than Hedda live real lives, while she sits on various seats (piano stool, chair, couch, etc) critiquing them, goading them, sympathising with them. Even when she stands, she stands apart, giving her pithy sarcastic "tweets" of remarks, as much for the audience as for anyone else, about others in the room. Van Hove places myriad rectangular shapes all over all the walls, which psychologically conjure up the image of life as a bank of endless televisions. On the left wall, he actually shows an image of everyone who rings the bell to enter Hedda's house, which means that everyone literally enters Hedda's life as a televisual image.

The ever-present maid, played by Eva Magyar, sits and watches the entire show, Hedda's only loyal ally, a fellow sitter and watcher and reviewer, who also perceives life as a stream of events and images that she is disengaged from, but must endlessly watch. I had an uncanny sense of being part of their crew of powerless reviewers, as I viewed the maid, viewing Hedda, viewing, and reviewing, the real lives of action and passion lived by Lovborg (Chukwudi Iwuji) and Mrs. Elvsted (Sinead Matthews).

Ruth Wilson was as wonderful as I have ever seen her in this, full of bile and irony, yet also excitement and naivety, and above all a deep silent sadness rooted in a sense of powerlessness, as again and again, she talks about power and powerlessness in relation to everyone and everything. That's how I feel, I thought, when I futilely curse at Trump or Gove or Johnson on the television, or snigger or weep, for that matter. I don't feel my opinion matters one jot, and that's exactly what I saw on stage with Ruth Wilson's Hedda Gabler. It just felt so modern.

It felt modern precisely because Van Hove does NOT restrict Hedda's horrible ennui to the nineteenth century repression of women, but allows it to just be: here, screams this production, is what ennui looks like: don't you feel it too?

When Hedda finally acts and does something terrible, her action is presented by Van Hove not as the twisted evil act of a twisted person (that we usually see), but as a spiritual becoming, accompanied by the playing of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, tears of relief flooding down Ruth Wilson's Hedda's cheeks, as she finally graduates from reviewer-of-life to be engaged with life, part of life, at last. Her ennui subsides.

Brack doesn't feel ennui, in this production. He's society's automaton, with no understanding of despair. That is why Rafe Spall's non-naturalistic portrayal worked so well for me. Spall moves rhythmically with the beat of Van Hove's background music, doing the robot, literally, staccato in his movements, exaggerated in slow motion expression: of course this societal robot would conclude of Hedda's desperate actions: "people don't do this!"

I loved Kyle Soller's Tesman. He is so affecting, natural and normal, not a secluded geek at all. His normality denies the contextual excuses for Hedda's ennui that might have allowed us to explain away her despair. Consequently, her misery lingers, unexplained and challenging, long after the performance ends.

For me, this Gogglebox Hedda Gabler has enormous resonance in our Gogglebox world, and I won't, and can't forget it!

4 and a half stars

Have to agree with Peggs, great interpretation Steve....and yes, I do feel like Hedda about politics at the moment....I have had to stop watching news programmes as I feel they are so stupid and shallow and wrong and yet nothing I do will change anything.......

Damnit, nowhere near enough to make an easy trip. I love me some War Horse and Curious Incident, but could we not swap one of those for this. *grumbles*