Hedda has real emotional problems of her own. While Carrie Bradshaw might have her run away with her old flame, Ibsen makes her plan his death. What does that tell you?

So the result is actually a pretty entertaining Hedda, and that's not a phrase you hear too often. But, of course, by the time you get to that gunshot at the end (which seems more random and hackneyed than ever here) you can see the problem. Hedda's not a play about just a bored woman but a mountainous passion kept at bay by bourgeois propriety and small-mindedness. It's also about some other people, too.

Anthony Weigh turns in a milquetoast, but not unlikeable George (here Jorgen), whose presence shows the protagonist's problems are not necessarily all about a bad marriage. Hugo Weaving turns in a more whiskered version of his Matrix bad guy as Judge Brack, which wouldn't be too far off the mark if he didn't practically twirl that mustache so brazenly. The dead weight in the group, unfortunately, is the Lovborg of Aden Young, who generates no onstage chemistry with Blanchett (can you believe it?), thus providing no engine for the play's tragedy. If your Hedda looks like she can eat your Lovborg alive at any moment, it's time to recast.

It was hard not to think back to another Hedda just over a year ago at (yes) New York Theatre Workshop - Elizabeth Marvel's rendition in Ivo Van Hove's trippy modernization. The two productions were from entirely different schools, so comparison is not really fair, and Van Hove is playing his own private game. But Marvel managed to show us in that extreme whacked-out performance the core of Hedda's diseased soul, an unforgettable portrait of neurotic, totally irrational depression. There will never be another Hedda like hers, nor should there be. But it serves as a necessary reminder that Hedda is more than a girl with "attitude."

For tickets and schedule for this production go to bam.org.