Associated Press
[Source: AP]
In Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda,” Tessa Thompson’s titular socialite sows chaos. She manipulates. She cuts people to the bone with a quip. She pours more drinks.
Hedda Gabler, the heroine of Henrik Ibsen’s 1890 play, has long been one of theater’s most tragic figures, a woman hemmed in by societal convention and her own dread of scandal. She is that, and more, in DaCosta’s new “Hedda.”
“Many think of her as a woman that’s suicidal,” Thompson says. “I think of her as someone who’s dying to live, and dying to live on her own terms. She might do some pretty questionable things in the pursuit of that, but I think the actual pursuit is really aspirational and beautiful.”
“Hedda,” which opens in theaters Friday and streams Oct. 29 on Prime Video, is a blistering tour de force for Thompson. In the two-decade career of the 42-year-old Los Angeles native, no role has given Thompson a more complicated, contradiction-rife character that showcases all her charisma, all her cunning, all her capacity to stir things up.
It’s a somewhat rare full-view of Thompson, who has generally favored ensembles, from Marvel movies to “Creed.” And it’s something spikier and sexier for Thompson, whose roles — empathetic, kindhearted — have often hewed closer to her own thoughtful personality. But in “Hedda,” Thompson is brash and brutal.
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