Hedda Pays a Visit to ‘60s America at 120 mph

The world’s great works of dramatic literature ask more questions than they answer. They fire our collective imagination with tantalizing ambiguities, not pat declarations or easy thesis points.

That said, here’s a certainty: Hedda Gabler needed to get out more. All that stifling late 19th century Norwegian air, those joyless chats with her husband’s doting aunt--someone wanna open a window, please?

Someone has. Under the tastefully demented eye of Robert Prior, the gender-bent troupe Fabulous Monsters has given Henrik Ibsen’s antiheroine a one-way ticket to 1962 America. And Hedda’s still toting her dad’s gun.

Now at the Evidence Room, “Speed-Hedda” unfolds in the era of mambos on the hi-fi, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” on Broadway, “The Chapman Report” on movie screens and fistfuls of amphetamines coursing through the nervous systems of wives everywhere. It’s a pretty funny 75-minute redux of Ibsen’s masterwork, offering a drag Hedda (Mark Brey) cranked on uppers. When she’s really flying, she dances around the den to the manic vocal stylings of Peruvian songbird Yma Sumac.

As Hedda, who favors the smart black cocktail dress, Brey towers over his cohorts, which is part of the gag. Another part is the music. Key conspiratorial conversations--surprisingly faithful to the Ibsen text--take place while the characters share a mambo or cha-cha, choreographed neatly by Carol Cetrone. (John Zalewski’s sound design is a plus.)

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Adapter-director Prior has a nifty idea going for him here, though his adaptation sometimes gets stuck halfway between fidelity to the original and its own kitschy realm. He has taken Ibsen’s 1890 landmark and used it for early ‘60s B-movie fodder. Hedda oversees a snake pit of jealousy and passion. The rivalry between her staggeringly boring academic husband (Bennett Schneider) and the seductive visionary Lovborg (Schneider again) is like a square-off between Wally Cox and Sal Mineo.

As played by Tim Dunaway, whose Nancy Sinatra wig resembles something Dairy Queen might market to entire families, Thea is a walking, flouncing sight gag. Staying “down at the Y,” she serves the same function here as in Ibsen--hopelessly devoted to Lovborg, nervous around Hedda. Judge Brack, Ibsen’s blackmailing authority figure, here becomes friendly Doctor Brock (Kirk Wilson), who keeps Hedda stoked on pharmaceuticals.

Many clever things here. Still, “Speed-Hedda” never really hits the camp heights. For a show about a woman out of control, the pacing is on the sluggish side; the transitions don’t zip as they should. Even within its chosen, deliberately cheesy parameters, most of the acting’s just adequate (Brey stands out). We can’t all be Charles Busch or John “Lypsinka” Epperson--if we were, well, the fashion wars would be grueling--but drag humor is like any other kind of humor. The best practitioners can wig out (literally and figuratively), go broad and cheap, and still surprise us with offhand line readings, weird little vocal frills. Overall the performance effects in “Speed-Hedda” are on the obvious side.

To Prior’s credit, “Speed-Hedda” hits some effective bittersweet chords near the end. Prior and company play Hedda’s suicide (scored by “If Ever I Would Leave You,” from the “Camelot” cast album) much as Ibsen did: As a sobering, sudden slap in the other characters’ faces. “Everything I touch turns to horse----!!!” wails this Hedda, just before turning on the hi-fi for the last time.

The show itself could use a little of what Hedda’s knocking back. But you find yourself grinning over the better bits a day or two later.

* “Speed-Hedda,” the Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 10. $15-$20. (213) 381-7118. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Mark Brey: Hedda

Bennett Schneider: George/Eliot

Tim Dunaway: Thea/Aunt Julie

Kirk Wilson: Dr. Brock

Robert Navarret: Berte

Adapted from Henrik Ibsen and directed by Robert A. Prior. Choreographer Carol Cetrone. Lighting by Jerry Browning. Sound by John Zalewski. Production manager Kendra Rickert.