A nerve-jangling 'Hedda Gabler' arrives on B'way

And caged she is, trapped in a suffocating marriage to a milquetoast academic and willing to do just about anything to break free.

That perpetual agitation comes with the play but in Rickson's aggressive interpretation, it overwhelms this uneven Roundabout Theatre Company revival.

The problems start with Mary-Louise Parker's hyper-neurotic performance of the title character. The actress is feverishly upset from the get-go, giving her little room to ratchet up the resentment over the course of the play, which opened Sunday at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre.

Though Parker looks sensational in designer Ann Roth's fetching dresses and usually is adept at portraying little-girl-lost desperation, she delivers an idiosyncratic, yet one-note portrait of self-absorption, a woman not caring whom she hurts. Hedda's observations are often cruel, sneering, for example, at the scholarly ruminations of Tesman, her good-natured husband, played by Michael Cerveris with an excess of moist sincerity.

And Hedda doesn't have much use for others either: Tesman's motherly aunt (Helen Carey), a timid maid (Lois Markle) or young Thea Elvsted (Ana Reeder), a rival of Hedda's for a dissolute writer named Ejlert Lovborg.

Hedda's moment alone with Lovborg, a gruff but colorless Paul Sparks, contains a bit of erotic fumbling that underlines the sexual tension that exists in Hedda. It's a longing that is never satisfied by her husband.

Hedda is the ultimate outsider — the original rebel without a cause. Yet she's very aware that her confinement was of her own doing, allowing herself to be ensnared by the conventions of late 19th century society.

The one character who sees through the woman's misery (and is just as manipulative as Hedda) is Judge Brack, played by the great Swedish actor Peter Stormare. Though he looks appropriately lecherous, Stormare seems uncomfortable with the dialogue, which should ooze with a serpentine brilliance when he is attempting to seduce Hedda.

If the production and performances are jagged, playwright Christopher Shinn's clear-headed, economical and modern-sounding adaptation is not. It moves with surprisingly swiftness across Hildegard Bechtler's odd, almost spare setting of the Tesman living room, which is as off-kilter as the people who occupy it.

"Hedda Gabler" is Rickson's second major revival of the current Broadway season. The first was his incandescent production of "The Seagull." The Chekhov masterpiece was filled with glowing performances, more than a few laughs and a couple of tears.

"Hedda Gabler" is a different kind of play, more jarring and more upfront with its emotions. While the leading character certainly isn't likable, she does have to be fascinating. Here, Hedda's behavior proves to be only disappointingly outrageous.