Mara Weisband and Emily Chapman (Photo by Mia Christou)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Beverly Hills Playhouse
Thru Dec. 8
The Doll’s House Project pairs Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 classic A Doll’s House with Lucas Hnath’s celebrated 2017 drama, A Doll’s House, Part 2. The two productions are now running in tandem at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
Ibsen’s modernist masterpiece deals with the then scandalous defection of proto-feminist protagonist Nora Helmer, who, after eight years spent in superficially “happy” but emotionally dulled subservience, suddenly realizes the oppression and futility of her marriage. She then leaves for good, slamming the door on her children and her husband in a revolutionary departure that became known as the “door slam heard round the world.”
Hnath’s play revisits Nora and Torvald some 15 years in the future, when their fates and fortunes once again intertwine.
Featuring different directors and different casts, the side-by-side staging of these two plays provides a rare opportunity to experience both the original and the sequel, back-to-back. But unlike its co-production, which is directed by Allen Barton, A Doll’s House, directed by Mia Christou, is an object lesson in good intentions gone seriously awry.
One glaring problem is Christou’s attempt to modernize Ibsen’s classic with a new adaptation, co-written by herself and Barton. Here, the arc of the action remains roughly the same: the dress is in period, as are large portions of Ibsen’s original text, including Torvald’s delicious “mansplaining” to a female character about how graceful and delicate embroidery is, in contrast to clumsy and unfeminine knitting. Yet placing all the characters, even the servant, on a cozy first-name basis doesn’t serve to bring things up to date. More egregiously, dropping the occasional f-bomb into the dialogue seems grossly jarring, considering the formality and conventions of the day.
Also problematic is the scaled-down set, which doesn’t offer the opportunity for that definitively slammed door, —but then, little in Christou’s staging strikes one as definitive.
In keeping with modern trends, Hnath’s play, (which premiered at South Coast Repertory before a Broadway run starring Laurie Metcalf) ran a breezy 90 minutes. So why, if Christou and Barton were attempting to make Ibsen newly relevant to contemporary audiences, does the running time of this House run just shy of three hours? Surely, this “updating” could have benefited from a few nips and tucks.
Certain performances fall just short of parody. As Kristine, Nora’s girlhood friend fallen on hard times, Mara Weisband has the chops for the role but too often defaults to sarcasm at the price of sincerity — a failing that could have been directorially rectified — while Wallez “Wally” James’s moustache-twirling Krogstad, the desperate moneylender who threatens to upend Nora’s life, lacks nuance. Other performers fare better. David Bernstein, sharing the role with Eric Toms, is refreshingly on point as Dr. Rank, Torvald’s terminally ill best friend, who has secretly adored Nora for years. Jody Booth rounds out the cast as Nora’s briskly capable nanny, Anne-Marie.
Both Emily Chapman’s Nora and Griffin Taylor’s Torvald can be quite winning in their complicated and challenging roles. In fact, the two performers have everything it takes — with the exception of a competent director. In otherwise engaging performances, they burden the crucial final scene with too many pregnant pauses and too much internalized anguish, decelerating the pace in an already overlong production. Again, a little more directorial oversight could have allowed Nora’s radical renunciation to appeal to our emotions instead of straining our patience.
Beverly Hills Playhouse, 254 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills. Fri., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm; thru Dec. 8. (310) 620-1134. www.bhplayhouse.com Running time: two hours and 45 minutes with an intermission.
