Look, at least we tried. These are fully explored in the Stage Club's new production, which pulls off the difficult trick of making this difficult text both entertaining and accessible. Nothing innovative is attempted by way of staging, the focus being on the text itself.
Depth is added with an antechamber upstage of the main acting area.
Against this backdrop Hedda is like a caged animal raging against its imprisonment. Nicola Perry turns in an imperious performance as Hedda, capturing both the character's restless anger at being trapped in genteel poverty, and the ennui that prevents her from doing anything about it. As her erstwhile suitor Lovborg, Joseph O'Keefe is every bit her match, all brooding intensity and energy. Maureen McConnell as the aunt manages to make her relatively small role compelling by injecting an edge of menace into her portrayal of an ostensibly sweet old woman in whom the milk of human kindness has curdled into a sickly piety. Director Phil McConnell keeps the action taut despite the wordiness of the text by uncovering the emotion behind each formal line, the tensions that underpin every conversation.