Review: Nora – And An Intriguing Debate – Returns in ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’

 

As the lights come up on Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2, looming ominously upstage center is the infamous front door of Torvald Helmer’s house, the door through which Nora Helmer passed on her way out in Ibsen’s original classic. But now, fifteen years later…knock, knock, knock…and of course, we know very well who is at the door. Nora has returned to her now emptier former residence, admittedly a stranger, with a story and a problem. While Nora’s actions and fate have been the subject of endless discussion and speculation for the 140 years since Ibsen’s play premiered, Hnath’s take on Nora’s fate—in essence, four conflicting points of view presented for debate—has elements that are simultaneously encouraging and disheartening in their modern context, but are also certainly logical and most assuredly clever, funny, and thought-provoking.

In the current exceptional production by Flying Anvil Theatre and DuckEars Theatre, director Casey Sams has guided a superb cast of four through Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2, painting an Ibsen-esque facade that peels away revealing some very modern roots. Of course, it is from Ibsen that we get the set-up: buffeted by circumstances beyond her control as a woman, Nora realizes that her marriage to Torvald is an existential black hole from which there was but one escape. She leaves Torvald and their three young children to pursue her own fate.

And now, Nora is knocking on the door, unfortunately for much the same reason that prompted her escape in the first place. She has become a very successful novelist, happy in living unattached, but finds herself with legal difficulties when she discovers Torvald never actually divorced her. As Nora, Nancy Duckles has created a character that is endlessly satisfying to watch—a brilliant strategic mix of subtle warmth, icy determination, and a humorous modernity—a woman whose existential compass swings narrowly from embracing the importance of self to creatively finding an alternative to compromise.

Opening the door for Nora is the Helmer family housekeeper, Anne Marie, portrayed by a delightfully bold and deliciously earthy Linda High. It is through High that we see a fourth point of view that was, perhaps, not as important to Ibsen in 1879 as it is today—the plight of  members of the working class subject to the whims and decisions made by the affluent class. In one of High’s most important speeches, Anne Marie confronts Nora with the resentment for what her departure precipitated, “forcing” her by default to give up her own life to raise the Helmer children.

The third point of view comes by way of Nora’s now adult daughter, Emmy, played with a bubbly brightness and energy by Maddie Poeta. Much to Nora’s chagrin, Emmy is a young woman who has, perhaps, inherited her mother’s creativity, but one who is perfectly happy and willing to use that ability to play society’s game of marriage acquisition in a male-dominated world.

Of course, the second point of view comes from Torvald, the ultimate symbol of society’s constraining—and maddening—effect on women in the traditions of marriage. In a consummately insightful performance, John Forrest Ferguson has painted Torvald as a man who secretly yearns to understand what has happened to himself and Nora, even if that understanding is accomplished with reluctance and hesitation. Ferguson beautifully constructs Torvald’s deeply satisfying dramatic arc, one that begins with bitterness and ends with some degree of transformation.

Hnath never lets us forget that we’re not watching and listening to Ibsen. His language is unmistakably modern in its percussiveness and we have to be told through exposition of just what the instigating factors are in the narrative. It’s also worth noting that Hnath—and by extension, Sams as director—presents the four points of view with their pluses and minuses, without actually taking sides in the debate. In a sense, this is one of the strengths of the script, certainly a contributor to fostering audience reflection, something that this production eagerly welcomes.

Sams and her creative crew (Chris Pickart, set design; Jordan Vera, lighting design; Liz Aaron, costume design; Kathryn Nabors, prop design) have placed the narrative within the simplest of environments that neither reveals nor obscures: a few walls, a window for atmosphere, some chairs, a table, and, of course, the ominously placed front door. The starkness of white light seemed mostly appropriate against Nora’s luxurious dress and Torvald’s black suit. Nothing obscures the narrative; nothing symbolizes a particular point of view.

That last point is important—Hnath wants the audience for A Doll’s House, Part 2 to think—think about the choices we make and how we balance our own self-interests with the interests of those around us. This production is highly recommended for that reason; one will leave the theatre weighing the decisions and actions revealed, and hopefully, translate that process into our own lives. That is perhaps the most important thing any work of theatre can do for us.

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •