A Doll’s House, Part 2
Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
International City Theatre
Through May 1
RECOMMENDED:
What is the point of writing and staging a sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s 1894 world classic A Doll’s House – perhaps the earliest call to feminism in modern stage literature?
In his 2003 striking production, A Mabou Mines Dollhouse, director Lee Breuer turned Nora, the “doll” – the archetypal wife and mother of an extremely traditional middle-class nuclear family in Norway – into a kind of Amazon warrior. He cast the looming Maude Mitchell (a brilliant performance), and, as Ibsen wrote, had her close the play by slamming the door on her husband, Torvald, and their three children, thereby walking into an indeterminate future. Ibsen gives her a speech explaining why she’s taking such a scandalous (for 19th century Norway) decision, which Mitchell rendered nude and with head shaved. Call it the end of the “good, do-as-you’re-told, pretty little girl” era. Breuer described that speech not as dialogue but as an “anthem.” Meanwhile, Torvald (Mark Povinelli) was portrayed as what would today be called a “little person” – a banker whose very livelihood is predicated on steering clear of scandal, and sustaining for himself and his family unimpeachable moral standards. He could be living in either 1894 Norway or 1954 America. Torvald finds himself battling an incoming social tide of change (prophesied by Ibsen), fighting for both his purpose and for his masculinity.
To enjoy Lucas Hnath’s 2017 sequel, now playing at Long Beach’s International Theatre, one need not have first-hand knowledge of Ibsen’s play, because whatever is relevant gets covered in Hnath’s play. (Part 2 was commissioned and first produced by Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory before transferring to Broadway.)
Does Nora have a “right” to abandon her husband and children in order to pursue her own life? Where lies the divide between entitlement and selfishness, between responsibility and indulgence? These are the strategically unanswered questions raised by Ibsen. So what does Hnath offer that’s any different?
A little, and a lot. In the sequel, Nora (Jennifer Shelton) returns to the same house 15 years after she stormed out, knocking at the same door she once slammed behind her. She’s become a successful “women’s author” – now far wealthier than her ex — writing under a pseudonym and advocating for the end of marriage as an institution, for its stultifying effects on wives and husbands. All the contracts she signed for her books were built on the assumption that she was divorced because, well, her husband had agreed to file for divorce. Problem is, he didn’t. As a married woman in turn of the 20th century Norway, she needed her husband’s consent before signing such contracts, and Nora simply didn’t realize she was still married. And now she’s finally been identified, placing her in in legal jeopardy.
“You left!,” Torvald (Scott Roberts) fumes, when she asks him to file for the divorce, as he had once agreed to. Why should he help her now?
Then come the in-the-trenches reverberations of Nora’s decision 15 years ago. Their housekeeper, Anne Marie (Eileen T’Kaye), possesses a fierce loyalty to Torvald, and animus towards Nora for her utter disregard of her role in helping rear the three children whom Nora abandoned.
Perhaps the most revelatory confrontation comes from Emmy (Nicolette Ellis), Nora’s youngest child, now an adult, who was too young when Nora left to remember her. Ellis serves up about as glorious a rendition as could be imagined. Poised, slightly coquettish, and seemingly indifferent. As in, you’re my mother, I know, nice to meet you. Am I upset? Goodness, I never knew you. What’s to be upset about? She conveys all this through an unwavering smile – and a cemented composure that ever-so-slowly crumbles, as though being eroded by the winds of time over 15 years. She wants to marry, and this woman, this stranger, her mother, has been advocating for the end of everything she wants for herself. How many other marriages has Nora destroyed in her quest for autonomy? Family values.
Somehow Hnath pulls this off – with some vicious verbal attacks on Nora by Torvald (Roberts is as temperamentally gentle as he is genteel), who explodes at her for a valid reason not to be revealed here, “I can’t win with you!”
And yet, this is not a work of misogyny. The social strictures that confined Nora were as valid then as they are now – though twisted into 21st century mutations. Her core argument about the shape of societies, and its constrictions on everybody within them, is as valid for her time as it is for ours. She is a heroine worthy of an anthem. At the same time, Hnath strikes at the inter-personal consequences of her heroism – what today might be called the “harm caused.” As in Ibsen’s play, the discussion remains an open forum.
Trevor Biship-Gillespie’s staging is a marvelous as his ensemble and design team. Though Kimberly DeShgazo’s costumes are scrumptuously of the era, Yuri Okahana-Benson set refuses to box the audience on the other side of some fourth wall, to stare at the minutiae of turn-of-the-century set decorations – which would be the distracting detritus of psychological realism. Rather, the stage is Spartan, a table and chairs, a door frame upstage – truly just a frame, a skeleton of sticks. This allows the play’s ideas and nuances and reverberations to soar as high and unconstricted as they deserve. Add to that Jeff Polunas’ sound design that introduces each segment – each character’s point of view – with a single note from a piano. The cumulative effect is as mysterious as it is magical.
T’Kaye’s Anne Marie twists her torso into visceral reactions to both Nora and Emmy in a kind of ballet that gives new meaning to the term, body language. Shelton’s Nora arrives with and sustains an elegant almost unflappable decorum, which is remarkable given what’s hurled at her. The pain that lands can be discerned only in a slight twinkle of pain within her eyes. Perhaps this is largely why Nora remains so empathetic, despite all the evidence that castigates her. Roberts’s Torvald is no “little person” as in Lee Breuer’s staging. He comports himself with a dignity – albeit a rattled dignity – that frays and then shatters from the force of his exasperation with the gulf of incomprehension between himself and his ex. The gulf does close a smidgen, but not enough for his happiness, or even his satisfaction. It’s another beautiful performance in a remarkable spectacle.
International City Theatre, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 330 East Seaside Way, Long Beach; Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm, thru May 1. www.InternationalCityTheatre.org
