Review: HEDDA, Starring Lily Allen, Theatre Royal Bath

Anyone who thinks Lily Allen's simply an upstart pop star plonked onstage to pull in the punters and rake in the cash, well, you can think again. She's delightfully dangerous and destructive – so much so you can't take your eyes off her – in Matthew Dunster's new cheeky version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in Theatre Royal Bath's intimate Ustinov Studio.

Allen's West End track record includes 2:22 A Ghost Story (also directed by Dunster), which garnered her an Olivier nomination, and The Pillowman with co-star Steve Pemberton. I'm pretty certain Hedda will be transferred to London and Allen will be in the running for more awards for her portrayal of an unsettlingly beautiful and brittle Hedda.

After a lengthy honeymoon, with many Instagrammable pictures to show for it, Hedda's already bored and trapped in her marriage to her dull and underachieving academic husband George (Ciaran Owens). Despite an expensive apartment that George has maxed out his and his aunts' finances to obtain for her, she finds it stifling.

Excellent set and costume designer Anna Fleischle provides a vogueish living room with swirling white curtains, soft grey sofas and Scandi wood panelling where clever inset doors pop open by backstage hands. There's also a nod to Hedda's past – a record turntable owned by the music biz exec father who spoilt her.

Hedda's world is upended with the arrival of former lover Jasper (played by a very promising Tom Austen) and her friend Taya (Julia Chan), who's left her husband in Frome (cue laughter from a West Country audience to the disparaging reference) for Jasper. Jasper's brilliant new book on his laptop, which is key to the plot, threatens George's career prospects at the university.

Downton Abbey's Brendan Coyle is wonderfully sinister as local MP and property magnate Brack. His scenes with Allen admirably display the perils of a precarious cat and mouse game gone wrong.

Imogen Stubbs plays George's gushing aunt Julia, fussing about him, while trying valiantly to befriend a standoffish Hedda. Housekeeper Danni (a warm and solid Najla Andrade) does her best to look after everyone, in particular Hedda who believes she's a cut above the household servant.

All the cast are terrific in this production, but there's a certain steely stillness in Allen's performance that lifts her into a different universe. She's a real revelation in her ability to command the stage by holding her frustrations, anger and unhappiness inside.

This up-to-the-minute depiction of Hedda reminds me of all those bored rich housewives in the Notting Hills and Claphams and Brutons (maybe even Frome one day), decked out in costly athleisure wear and hanging about in over-priced coffee shops after dropping little Oliver and Willow off at school. Like Hedda, many refuse to be career women and do any actual work, but they aren't really cut out to be old-fashioned baking and crafting moms either. So, where does this leave them?

Allen, with her scrolling, vaping, nervous pats of her fringe and constant fingering of well-manicured nails, shows the tenuous position this modern day Hedda's trying to occupy. She conveys Hedda's pain and how lonely she must be in a world where she appears to have it all – but in the end has nothing.

Hedda runs in the Ustinov Studio at Theatre Royal Bath until August 23.