Lily Allen proves any naysayers wrong with her biggest stage triumph yet

Telegraph

a day ago

The irreverent pop star who has valiantly ventured into acting, to praise – but also sniffs of disapproval – Lily Allen's third project with director Matthew Dunster is her toughest gig yet, even though it is staged in Bath Theatre Royal's 120-seat studio.
Following her West End shows 2:22 A Ghost Story and The Pillowman, she tackles the lead in Ibsen's masterpiece Hedda Gabler (1891), updated by Dunster. She stars as its titular vengefully bored 'trapped housewife' Hedda, a woman destructively indifferent to her flailing academic husband, and to the life and work of a brighter old flame, now his rival.
It proves her biggest wow to date. From the moment she enters, pristine in chic blue pyjamas, hair scraped back, eyes glinting, to the devastating climax, passing through attitudes of comic brusqueness, mischief, viciousness and turmoil, she transfixes.
The drawback of the production, in fact, is that, if anything, she eclipses those around her, including Ciarán Owens as her hapless hubby George and rising star Tom Austen as the visionary but vulnerable rival Jasper, a recovering alcoholic. So much is relayed through her icy gaze, her studied blankness, her surreptitious smile – that she often seems to be on a different plane of naturalism to everyone else.
The cast could usefully follow her sometimes almost televisual lead (Imogen Stubbs as a clucking aunt is particularly fluttery). But everyone around Hedda is, in a way, doomed to seem extraneous and overblown. The anti-heroine's worldview – which we come to understand even if it perturbs us – is of the futility of pleasantries, and bourgeois creature comforts; she is in search of some elusive meaning. Her disgust at those who try to placate and animate her is a form of displaced self-hatred, too. Newly hitched, she has followed the path of least resistance to a place of deadly ennui.
Dunster doesn't stint on modishness. Placing the action in a suffocating, nominally desirable living room lined by white curtains and wood panels (the inset doors of which are opened, distractingly, by unseen hands), the characters here consult mobiles, listen to pop (The Streets, saliently), and, in Allen's case, vape.
The crucial manuscript of Jasper's masterwork that falls into her pitiless hands is now a laptop. It's a bit de trop to have her demanding a Tesla as a conjugal right, but the point is well made that, refusing to be a career woman but also rejecting old-school motherhood too (Hedda horrifically pummels her abdomen), she expresses a contemporary feminist nihilism; and is cryingly alone.
Fans may enjoy discerning art meets life parallels, which seem to inform every canny theatre choice Allen makes. Besides the diva-ish behaviour, there are daddy issues (Hedda's late father was a record industry exec ruined by the advent of streaming). And aside from her own two marriage breakdowns, Allen has recently made controversial comments about the challenges of motherhood, saying it 'ruined' her career.
Once again, she seems to be using creativity to explore her own experiences, and inner demons – and opening it all up to us – but the revelation is that the result works on its own terms too. Simply put, you need never have heard of Lily Allen to be impressed by this.
Until Aug 23; theatreroyal.org.uk