An Audience Visits With Hedda Gabler at Home, a Real Home.

Stay out of the way of that Hedda Gabler woman. I'm serious. If you stretch your legs, she might well trip over them. She's a frisky little thing, in her cropped black pants and ankle boots, prone to activities like jumping up and down on an ottoman or pouring Champagne over a teetotaling guest. And she's often close enough to you -- yes, you, lucky theatergoer -- to plop right down into your lap, should she choose. The lady doesn't choose, as it happens. Hedda may be a contemptuous creature, full of weary scorn for those around her. But Caitlin Fitzgerald, the actress playing the title role in the new site-specific production of the Ibsen play, respects the division between herself and her audience. All the same, the idea that Ms. Fitzgerald might lose her balance while emoting heavily in your immediate vicinity does generate at least a wee frisson of anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]