Thomas Ostermeier continues his audacious renovation of the Ibsen canon with this relentlessly contemporary staging, visiting the Dublin theatre festival from Berlin's Schaubühne. Jan Pappelbaum's marvel of a set - a revolving glass and concrete box with a wall of windows rigged to simulate continual rain - establishes the world of cold, awkward angles that is the Tesmans' newlywed life. Video images of leafy West Berlin streets and the Beach Boys' God Only Knows add a layer of soporific beauty. As with his 2002 Doll's House, Ostermeier has taken liberties with the play's famous ending, alongside textual changes and updatings - references to Asian strip clubs and Aids, a lost manuscript becoming a misplaced laptop - that will surely disgruntle purists. But it's all in aid of the honourable enterprise at the heart of all great productions of the classics: to make the drama surprise and compel anew.
There will doubtless be arguments about whether it's plausible that such an intelligent present-day woman can be trapped in housewife and mother roles. I resisted, but then succumbed, thanks to Katharina Schüttler's complex and mesmerising portrayal: her Hedda is a relentless coquette addicted to power games, but bored with how easily her male prey is won over. There is danger and horror just under the surface: she ends up in awkward, silent physical confrontations with all three of the male characters.
Ibsen's depiction of academic politics transposes brilliantly to the present, and provides the production with most of its mordant humour - the contrast of Tesman's Milquetoast idealism and Lovborg's arrogant intensity makes this seem at times like a Nordic On Beauty.
As the set makes its final, agonising, slow revolve, the production feels like a bonkers science experiment: Ostermeier and his brilliant company have cut the play open and revealed its beating heart.
