On the chain around Hedda Gabler’s neck hangs a key to her father’s gun case. One needn’t be a genius to deduce that the key will be used, and eventually the gun as well, in writer-director Nia DaCosta ’s sharpened-claws adaptation of the classic Henrik Ibsen play, which stars Tessa Thompson as a singularly destructive social creature whose best-laid plans backfire when she opts for status over love. As Chekhov advised two years before “Hedda Gabler” was first performed, ”One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” To which Ibsen might add: or a sniper like Hedda without a house full of targets.

What does take brains is transposing “Hedda” from 1891 to the 1950s, manipulating critical details of the characters’ identities in the process. In DaCo

See Full Page