‘Hedda’ offers a queer upending of old play

Tom Bateman, right, and Tessa Thompson star in “Hedda.”

Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh/Prime

“Hedda Gabler,” written by the Norwegian playwright Heinrik Ibsen in 1891, eventually became a feminist classic about a strong, passionate, unruly woman bored with her marriage and life, trying unsuccessfully to find a sense of fulfillment amid violence and female sexual repression. Director Nia DaCosta has given the drama a visually inventive cinematic queer power struggle reimagining, moving the action to a party in the English countryside during the 1950s with all its social constraints in her film adaptation, “Hedda,” now streaming on Amazon Prime.   It’s a bold attempt to be both classical and modern, yet the two don’t quite gel in the final distillation. It succeeds on a limited basis, but one ca