What does Hedda seek?  I think that’s the question at the heart of Liisa Ripo-Martelli’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that opened at Coal Mine Theatre on Thursday evening.  It’s not heavily adapted.  It’s still Kristiania in the late 19th century and the environment is as dull, provincial, stuffy and “respectable” as can be.  The language is a little more direct than Ibsen especially in the way men speak to women but still more is left unsaid than not.  Presented with the audience on three sides of the tiny Coal Mine space it’s intimate to the point of, entirely appropriate, claustrophobia.

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