Hedda - Ustinov, Bath

Yes, it reminds me of a quote I read recently from Kenneth Tynan decades ago railing against the demand that theatre be 'relevant'.  As he said, what narcissism it is to think that all plays should be about us.  They're not - they're about other people, in other situations at other times.  One reason we got to art, surely, is that we want to engage imaginatively with people who are not us, who are not like us, whose lives and experiences are very different.  I want to know what it feels like to be a provincial Russian at the end of the 19th century, to be a young man growing into kinghood, a young woman on the Regency marriage market.  

Now sometimes a reimagining can be great, and so can a production which aims to put on stage as much of the original play as possible - I loved both Ostermeier's Enemy of the People and Nunn's Uncle Vanya.  It all depends on the quality of the work.  But you've really got to be good to muck around with a great classic.  And I suspect that most of us are more interested in Chekov or Ibsen's mind than that of any contemporary reimaginer.