Hedda Gabler is a play largely trapped inside its protagonist’s head. It’s a sense preserved by Studio Theatre’s production. Staged with Scandinavian simplicity, the production allows the characters and their emotions to come to the fore. The stage shows only the Hedda’s tastefully decorated living room, with two doors to hint at the world outside. Within these walls Hedda herself reigns supreme. Wheedling, peevish, petulant, golden, and at times cloyingly sweet, her machinations drive both the play’s sense of motion and its feeling of suffocation.

When it first premiered in 1891, one review described it as “a bad escape of moral sewage gas,” saying that, “Hedda’s soul is a-crawl with the foulest passions of humanity.”