Hedda Gabler - Ibsen

Yikes! A bored, entitled woman wreaks havoc on the lives of those around her...

Hedda Gabler, daughter of an aristocratic general, has just returned from her honeymoon...bored and already dissatisfied with her marriage, her husband has combined his academic research with their honeymoon and within the fortnight of love she has begun to despise him.

An academic rival of her husband comes to visit after just completing a best selling novel. Hedda assumes her husbands rival will take over the professorship and their already strained finances will become impossible. Although the rival denies any interest in the professorship, Hedda begrudges his success and her unfortuitous marriage and harbors resentment only capable of a self obsessed neurotic.

The rival has completed a masterpiece, a sequel to his best seller, with the help of Mrs. Elvsted. And Hedda unable to cope with her jealousy of everything including his relationship with Mrs. Elvsted, convinces the rival to get drunk and go to a party, perhaps hoping that he will fall prey to drink once more and quickly end his budding career as a writer and begin a career as a less successful drunkard. When her husband returns from an outing he tell Hedda that he has found the manuscript of the rival and says he must return it as soon as possible.

Yet...when the rival comes in a panic to Hedda, distraught over the loss of his masterpiece - instead of telling him she has the manuscript she encourages him to commit suicide, giving him a pistol. She then burns the manuscript and tells her husband she has secured his future by destroying their rival. When the rival does commit suicide, and the police discover the gun and trace it back to her...she in a moment of panic and grief that once again someone has control over fate walks into the study and shoots herself.