Notable revivals of Henrik Ibsen’s shattering melodrama Hedda Gabler are far from rare. Oxford theatregoers will recall Adrian Noble’s superb production, with Bond –girl Rosamund Pike in the title role, that visited the Playhouse two years ago. Northampton’s Royal & Derngate staged the play to great acclaim just a couple of months ago.

But The Old Vic’s new take on the play under director Anna Mackmin is something else entirely, not least because we see Ibsen’s work reconfigured by the great Irish playwright Brian Friel.

In Sheridan Smith’s harrowing, horrifying account of Hedda, a star is not exactly being born — she was recognised as such already — but confirmed in a lasting place in the firmament. The winner of an Olivier award for her turn as the sassy heroine of the musical Legally Blonde, Ms Smith now reveals a talent to terrify every bit as potent as the one she possesses for comedy. From her first appearance she supplies a masterclass in malice, as she snubs her new husband’s beloved ‘Aunt Ju-Ju’ (Anne Reid). In an object lesson in calculated cruelty she affects to believe that Aunt Julia’s costly bonnet bel-ongs to servant Bertha, another to feel the rough edge of her tongue. Among conceits added by Friel is the notion that Hedda recognises herself to be addicted to making mischief — she tells us so, indeed. We are offered a puzzle, though, in wondering how she came to marry so preposterous a figure as that presented by Adrian Scarborough’s George Tesman. Scarborough’s Pooteres-que posings and Boy Scout enthusiasms hardly mark out Tesman as a serious academic, but he remains gloriously watchable throughout. So, too, does Darrell D’Silva as lecherous Judge Brack.

Until November 10. Box office 0844 8717628

Four stars