So you thought with the closing of Kate Burton's Hedda Gabler on Broadway, the theatre's current obsession with Ibsen's anti-heroine was over.

Not so fast. Or rather, not so slow. You don't know Hedda until you've met Speed-Hedda, the creation of L.A.'s Fabulous Monsters, which will play at La MaMa from Jan. 17 and Feb. 2. Sure, Ms. Gabler is restless, suffocating in her marriage to a petit-bourgeois academic. But this is 1962 American, so she's also mad for the Bossa Nova, popping prescription drugs like mints, and contending with the Suburbs and The Pill. Also, since this is the Fabulous Monsters, Hedda (indeed, everyone) is played by a man.

According to press materials, the show has been "reimagined as an early 1960s cinema shocker," the kind that boasted lurid poster art with taglines like "One was too bad to be good! One was too good to know better!" Expect keen attention to be paid to wigs and footwear.

La MaMa is located at 74A E. 4th St. In the East Village. Call (212) 475 7710.

—By Robert Simonson