Critics are particularly recommending Kate Burton’s performance. Ben Bradlee of The New York Times considers it a "rare benchmark" that serves to "redefine both a classic character and an actress." What Bradlee has in mind is Burton’s pedestrian slant on the role, "daring to be life-size in a traditionally larger-than-life role." True. Burton’s is no regal Hedda, no cool, distant, disdainful Hedda. Hers is a bright, flippant, nervy, exasperated Hedda, a woman caught in the unfortunate circumstance of having to descend the social/economic ladder. Burton explores the ebbing of Hedda, Hedda at the twilight of youth, Hedda in social decline, Hedda gone slumming. Her Hedda-on-the-way-down employs a tone more brassy than golden. There is no question that the script can support Burton’s interpretation. The background of Ibsen’s play tells us that Hedda had lost social and economic status following the demise of her father, General Gabler. Her prospects for marriage – the only occupation suitable to a woman of her background – had diminished, yes, because of the General’s death, but also because Hedda had rather used up her marriageable 20s, not in pursuit of marriage; and then there was her sexual game-playing adventure with Eilert Lovborg, coming to naught in terms of wedlock. When we meet Hedda she is not the wife of a passionate, mercurial, debauch-oriented, futurist with star quality named Eilert Lovborg, but is the newly-wed wife of a slightly above-average cultural historian without star quality, named George Tesman. Her situation has landed her on a plateau beneath her heritage, a situation she is attempting to deal with, accommodate, conform to, and resign to. It is justifiable for Burton to perform Hedda without a trace of Grace Kelly, as if the princess had been put to rest but the pain of having had to give up the princess is now manifesting in caustic behavior.

What is pesky in Burton’s portrayal is not the interpretation but the acting style. She has not ensconced her performance in the world of realism. She seems to want to teach us the play while playing it. The approach reminds me of Brecht wherein the actor gives a viewpoint on the character while doing the character. Brecht’s plays are written this way. Realistic plays are not. In realism, where the actor intends to become the character or at the very least to be on the side of the character, the actor does not comment on the situation of the character. Burton comments. She telegraphs Hedda’s dilemma. She slants the line-readings to point out how smart and funny Hedda can be in critiquing the middle class behavior around her. Burton is thoroughly in agreement with what adapter Jon Robin Baitz told her: "Hedda is the smartest and funniest person in the room." Burton works to be sure the audience gets that Hedda is the smartest and funniest person in the room.

Nicholas Martin’s direction doesn’t help create a sense of realism. The set is not made to feel livable in. There is a bit of furniture but the actors are not staged to ground themselves in a domestic reality. Of course the house in which Hedda and Tesman find themselves is new, and the other characters are visitors. But even so, the actors aren’t living in the set even if only living in an unfamiliar room. They aren’t relating to the given circumstances. Moreover, from time to time, Burton strays entirely from realism by coming down stage center and looking out. She delivers facial expressions as a commentary on what is going on upstage. By standing alone facing the audience, Hedda is actually facing the fourth wall of the living room.