“Hedda Gabler,” rather like “Hamlet” or “Sweet Charity,” can’t help but be a star turn. The success of a show that puts such incredible emphasis on its lead – keeping her onstage nearly the entire performance – will always depend on its title character. So it should come as no surprise that a touring production starring the alabaster Cate Blanchett excels. Ms. Blanchett’s ruthlessly detailed performance seems to surge out of Ibsen’s gloomy potboiler like a slender column supporting a heavy roof – even though that roof does sometimes seem structurally dodgy.

At first, director Robyn Nevin’s “Hedda Gabler” seems like an embarrassment of riches. The first act-and-a-half (the intermission arrives an abrupt 20 pages before the actual act break) crackles with delicious tension.The actors play Ibsen like he’s Chekhov, embroidering their performances with tics and natural phrasing that sound nothing like the elliptical Norwegian firebrand we’ve come to expect.

Playwrights at school learn Ibsen as the master of exposition. Unlike so many clumsier writers, his plays deliver huge amounts of information without conceding momentum. Here the cast goes that effortless setup one better, delivering the first scenes not as necessary “background,” but as particularly juicy gossip.

In a cascade of scenes, we meet Hedda, who is just back from her honeymoon with Jorgen Tesman (the adorably nebbish Anthony Weigh) and already terrorizing her new household. Impatient with her husband’s dullness, his aunt’s suffocating attentions, and the many small economies that characterize the bourgeoisie, Hedda lashes out. Her nastiness can sometimes be explained away as the snappishness of a caged lion, and other times it just looks like bullying. But whatever we think of her – grand or grating – Hedda certainly looms larger than life.

Her ideals – an immature hash of romantic, self-destructive notions – are put to an almost immediate test. While a family friend, Judge Brack (Hugo Weaving), prowls about, sniffing for a way into Hedda’s bed,her real soul mate, Lovborg the philosopher, shows up. Through the calming influence of his newest paramour, Thea Elvsted (Justine Clarke), Lovborg has written an important manuscript. But Hedda recoils from Lovborg’s new, domesticated self, wanting him to be the wild creature she remembers. Enraged, and quickly spiraling out of control, Hedda turns her mania for order against the lovers and the book, with her soul as collateral damage along the way.

Andrew Upton’s adaptation details events that other translations leave oblique. Hedda’s impending pregnancy,for instance, often goes ignored in other stagings, despite Ibsen’s liberal sprinkling of clues. Also, Ibsen practically had to force himself to write in prose (he much preferred poetry), and so other translations try to balance on the knife-edge between “dialogue” and “stanza.” But Mr. Upton prefers naturalism; lines overlap and even repeat in order to clarify the story. It’s both a loss and a gain, a bit like looking at the Sistine Chapel cleaned … but unmysterious.

Unfortunately, Mr. Upton and Ms. Nevin do undermine their own bright creation. Creating a bit of artificial drama (like the poundy drums that kill the ending), they send us into intermission 15 minutes too early. It certainly doesn’t hurt their first half – every rhythm was so unexpected that a surprise blackout was a nice touch. But the choice leaves their second half lurching about with one too many set changes and some dangerous longueurs. It also leaves us with a lot of unadulterated Lovborg (a drippy Aden Young, trying to make his sex-god hair act for him). He should goose the play into high gear – but instead he serves as a show-wide parking brake.

But lest we forget, we’re here to see Cate. Certainly Ms. Blanchett’s film roles (a steely Virgin Queen in “Elizabeth,” a flinty Kate Hepburn in “The Aviator”) prepare us for her palpable strength onstage. But her humor and willingness to paint Hedda as absurd come as a delightful surprise. Critics tie themselves in knots trying to find a new way to call Ms. Blanchett “luminous,” and it is true that in person she seems to be literally shedding light. If only the Sydney production around her were just that little bit darker, she might be set off to even greater advantage.Thank heavens for her old foil Mr. Weaving (he mooched around Middle Earth with her in “Lord of the Rings” as well as in the just-released “Little Fish”), playing the delicious, sinister creep. Their scenes together are of a higher dimension altogether, because of every element onstage, his coiling, seductive voice is the only contrast deep enough to elucidate Ms. Blanchett’s light.

Until March 25 (30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100).