The shows around town everyone’s talking about this week

Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, June 13, until June 27

Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is a play that, like the painting of Edvard Munch and saxophone playing of Jan Garbarek, enshrined the rest of the world’s idea that Norwegians revel in desolation and despair. In 2023, British playwright Nina Segal crafted this work about shooting a film of Hedda. Like Ibsen’s, it forensically probes the psyche of each character, but with the crucial difference that amid the strata of darkness are fine seams of comedy.

The film is being shot outside Oslo, and its director, Henrik, strictly refers to cast members by their characters’ names, and so that’s how we know them, too. Henrik, the auteur from hell, demands a purity of truth from his cast to elevate their work above mere acting, and Segal has their lives merge with those of the characters. Given that Hedda is a tragedy, it’s unlikely to end well.

While Segal’s script is flawed in its resolution, director Monica Sayers’ Secret House production is stunning in its completeness. James Smithers not only plays a relentlessly ruthless Henrik; he designed a striking set, fully exploiting the potential of the Seymour Centre’s Reginald Theatre. Into a raised stage is sunk the film set, a sofa-lined oblong pit, behind which are two dressing-room trailer interiors, with even the theatre’s gantry high above being used.

Qudos Bank Arena, June 13

For all the criticism K-pop receives about the idol industry being cutthroat and formulaic, with performances coming off as insincere, one thing sceptics cannot deny about IVE, the latest group to hit Australian shores, is that they are damn good at their jobs.

Displaying the hallmarks of a picture-perfect girl group, the sextet is a force to be reckoned with. Since their seismic debut in late 2021, their songs have topped charts in South Korea, they regularly sweep coveted industry awards, and it is difficult to walk more than 20 metres on a Seoul street or in the subway without seeing ads featuring fan-favourite member Wonyoung plastered on billboards.

After two years of honing skills, IVE’s return to Sydney signified a bolder, more confident declaration of their growth, a sentiment well encapsulated by gritty show openers XOXZ, Baddie and BLACKHOLE. The standout performance was Bang Bang, a bold EDM and electronic-pop anthem encouraging listeners to forge their own path and live unapologetically on their own terms.

The Neilson Nutshell, June 12, until July 18

Eleventh-century Scottish wannabe kings and Y2K wannabe child stars have soooo much in common. Right?! Ambitious. Kind of went “wrong” after they got big. Surrounded by potential haters. Both have toxic people close to them: wifey or mum, they’re put under insane pressure to make really dumb, selfish decisions. And yeah, this though: both are DOOMED by the system (cut-throat court or competitive kids’ TV) to a hella dramatic menty b and a career “yikes” that people will be talking about, like, forever.

This is the conceit, and the tweenage tone, of Yve Blake’s relentlessly silly adaptation of Macbeth, her first work since the feel-good smash-hit that was Fangirls. It’s a Bell Shakespeare production with Virginia Gay directing, a play with a few dance numbers and “it’s gonna be me-ay” Britneyesque songs (also by Blake) bubbling in the mix.

Be advised: viewers can expect light references to incest, disfigurement, and one ass-slap by a slimy producer. The Nutshell has perhaps never hosted so much booty-popping or scatological humour. (Betrayal via oven poop was one extremely juvenile touch.)

Concert Hall, Opera House, June 12

Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird (1910) is probably the most consequential work of Anatoly Liadov’s career. When commissioned by Ballet Russes director Sergei Diaghilev to compose music for a scenario of that name based on Russian folk stories, Liadov failed to meet the deadline, so Diaghilev turned to the relatively unknown Igor Stravinsky, who produced the large-scale score in six months. The rest is history.

This all-Russian program under Polish-Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko brought Liadov and Stravinsky’s The Firebird face to face, albeit separated by Shostakovich in one of his most explosively truculent moods. In the short symphonic poem Kikimora, Opus 63, itself the remnant of an incomplete opera, Boreyko and the SSO revealed Liadov as an expert orchestrator and sensual colourist, with refined instincts for subtle gestures.

After a darkly shaded opening and a haunting cor anglais melody (Alexandre Oguey), the woodwind section ignited the texture with sharp incendiary energy to brew crackling malevolence until the whole edifice suddenly vanishes with sardonic deftness. Cellist Maximilian Hornung chiselled out the four-note motive that begins and dominates Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 (1959) as though hewing granite and sustained the first movement with implacable resolution and drive.

Theatre Royal, June 12 until July 12

Welcome to the summer of love. It’s 1967, and you’re about to see something you’ve never seen in a theatre before. Blasphemy. Profanity. Flag burning. Onstage nudity. Sex. Drugs. Rock’n’roll. This is Hair.

All good so far, except that it’s not 1967. It’s 2026, and all of the above are available, 24/7, on a screen near you. So how does Gerome Ragni and James Rado’s revolutionary musical, Hair, stand up when it is stripped of the shock factor? Sad to say, not very well, at least in this touring production from the Australian Shakespeare Company.

Hair is a portrait of a tribe of young New Yorkers rejecting the social norms and mores of postwar America in favour of free love and world peace. The story, such as it is, follows one of the tribe’s struggle to decide whether to resist the draft or serve his country in Vietnam. We meet Berger (Maxwell Simon), Woof (Jackson McGovern), a soft-hearted sodomist, and Jeanie (Rosie Meader), a goofy kid who happens to be pregnant. We meet Hud (Tane Williams-Accra) with his magnificent ’fro, and Sheila (Elizabeth Brennan), a valiant activist. And in among these colourful characters walks Claude (Alex Cooper), a dreamer with a draft card.

Playhouse, Opera House, June 10, until June 21

Eddie Izzard loves a challenge. Her 131 marathons since 2009, raising money for charity, began with completing 43 of them in 51 days, despite no previous distance running. That gives context to her 140-minute version of Hamlet, playing all roles. For most actors, just playing the Dane is challenge enough.

It’s a monstrous achievement in terms of memory and stamina, and as entertainment it seldom flags. In quality of performance, it’s more variable.

Attired in clothes that cunningly imply a period setting without defining it, Izzard appears on a black-box stage with unchanging white light. The only theatrical embellishment to this production, directed by Selina Cadell, is the occasional interplay of two shadows on the backdrop to create the illusion of two interlocutors.