An impressive rise

You could be forgiven for thinking there is an air of Groundhog Day hanging round the Almeida: actor Benedict Cumberbatch is once again rehearsing Ibsen at the Islington theatre under the watchful eye of a former National Theatre artistic director.

Last time, he played consumptive doctor Lyngstrand in Trevor Nunn's 2003 production of The Lady From The Sea. This week, he opens as the bookish husband Tesman in Richard Eyre's Hedda Gabler. Both plays close in on wild, headstrong women battling against a repressive patriarchal system. So is he suffering from a Bill Murray moment?

'There are certainly similarities between the two,' says Cumberbatch. 'Both female characters are haunted by their past. And both plays have incredible dramatic force. But they inhabit very different places. The Lady From The Sea is about the physical world but Hedda Gabler takes place inside. The walls close in on Tesman.'

Of course, between these two stints in Ibsen, 28-year-old Cumberbatch cemented his reputation as a young actor to watch with his highly lauded performance as Stephen Hawking in last year's BBC biopic.

'It's the sort of part you dream of,' admits Cumberbatch.

'It was a hell of a responsibility to try to give the audience some idea of the man behind the wheelchair - and so much knowledge to absorb.

I can't pretend I understood a quarter of it but I loved trying.' Event TV, as it is known in the trade, evidently suits him: soon he'll be on our screens again alongside Victoria Hamilton in the adaptation of William Golding's seafaring trilogy To The Ends Of The Earth.

'Now that was great fun. I spent a year on a boat,' he says. 'I've been lucky that all my major TV appearances [he was also in the lesbian period drama Tipping The Velvet] have been great vehicles for getting challenging material out to a wide audience.' Cumberbatch has certainly achieved an impressive amount for one so young. 'I often pinch myself,' he laughs.

Impeccably polite, highly articulate and fully conversant in theatre protocol - everyone he has worked with is 'wonderful' - he first caught the media's eye back in 2001, fresh out of Manchester University and braving the elements at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.

His King Navarre in Love's Labour's Lost won him an Ian Charleson nomination. 'It's a magical space,' he enthuses. 'It's also like a bear pit, particularly if the audience have spent too long in the hospitality tent and are stumbling over their bottles.'

Ibsen offers a whole different set of challenges. The Norwegian playwright is known for his protofeminist portraits - Hedda, Ellida, and Nora in A Doll's House are all identified as women who fought openly against the socio-economic institutions of the time.