Eighty years after the Gate’s inaugural production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, it celebrates its birthday with a wonderful new version, by Brian Friel, of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Idealistic heroine or manipulative villain, the character of Hedda is one of the great dramatic roles in theatre and has become known as the ‘female Hamlet’.

As she struggles to come to terms with a marriage to a man she finds numbingly dull and a pregnancy that threatens to seize hold of her body and future, Hedda quickly realises that the roots of convention run deep and, aided and abetted by her predatory confidante, Judge Brack, begins to indulge in evil games, manipulating the fate of all who enter her orbit.