Katie Holmes-led ‘Hedda Gabler’ to open Old Globe’s 2026 season

Film and stage actor Katie Holmes will open The Old Globe’s 2026 season in February, starring as the title character in a new version of Henrik Ibsen’s classic drama “Hedda Gabler.”

Globe artistic director Barry Edelstein will direct the Globe-commissioned play, which will run Feb. 7 through March 8 in the Old Globe Theatre. Edelstein directed Holmes in 2023 in the off Broadway debut of “The Wanderers,” another Globe-commissioned piece that premiered here in 2018.

The new version of Ibsen’s 1891 play was written by Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote the screen adaptations for the female-centered novels “Secretary” and “The Girl on the Train.” She has also written more than a dozen plays.

Edelstein said in a statement that Wilson’s new version of “Hedda Gabler” will renew the classic play “through her frank and dynamic voice, with incendiary results.”

Set in Oslo, Norway, in the late 1800s, “Hedda Gabler” is about a complex and unhappily married woman who plots to financially ruin her former lover, who is also her husband’s professional rival. But when her scheme begins to unravel, she takes matters into her own hands.

The role of Hedda is considered one of the most challenging roles in the dramatic canon. Edelstein said Holmes, who co-starred last fall on Broadway in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” is a perfect fit for the role.

“Hedda, like Hamlet, rises or falls with the actor in the title role. She’s everything: victim, tyrant, femme fatale; funny, scathing, tragic. Only an actor with immense imagination and charisma can take on Hedda Gabler, and in Katie’s radiant and powerful performance, Globe audiences are going to witness something rare and special. She’s an artist at the height of her powers and we’re lucky to have her in San Diego,” Edelstein said.

Tickets for the play are only available by subscription as part of the Old Globe’s 2026 season, which has yet to be announced. Details at 619-234-5623 or theoldglobe.org.