Jocelyn Towne and Brian Tichnell (Photo by Jenny Graham)
Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
Antaeus Theatre Company
Through May 25
RECOMMENDED
It would be churlish not to recommend Cameron Watson’s staging of Nora, Ingmar Bergman’s redux version of Heinrik Ibsen’s 1879 feminist melodrama A Doll’s House. By 21st century standards, Ibsen’s play, revolutionary in its time for unearthing and excoriating the unwitting, systemic condescension of men towards women, is a stuffy pageant, filled with front-loaded exposition and all kinds of antiquated era-bound manners and mannerisms.
Yet, because the core idea lurking beneath all that detritus remains so potent, Ingmar Bergman, in his 1982 adaptation, was among the first to excavate the mummy in the hope that it might breathe. And it’s Bergman’s stripped down, one-act adaptation (translated and adapted by Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker) that Watson and company are staging. This is not some radical re-imagining by either Bergman or Watson. It’s exactly the same story with ne’er a plot twist on the original. The updating is simply in the economy of the story’s delivery. Fifteen short scenes propelled through slightly more than an hour and a half, sans intermission. (Ibsen’s version has three acts and normally plays for two and half hours.)
Before being promoted to bank manager, Torvald Helmer (Brian Tichnell) was suffering from some respiratory malady and needed therapy and a warm climate in order to recover. The treatment was something he couldn’t afford, so his flighty, caring wife Nora (Jocelyn Towne) saved her husband’s life by taking a loan, illegally because it was without her husband’s knowledge (let’s call it “hush money”), from a shark named Krogstad (Michael Kirby). That was then, this is now: Torvald is in good health with the prospect of good earnings. This has fed all the hubris that will be his downfall, infantilizing Nora as men were/are wont to do. Ibsen’s play dwells on the scandalous detail that the promissory note “signed” by her dying father was actually forged by Nora. Bergman’s sleeker adaptation mentions this but doesn’t dwell on it. It doesn’t have the time. That’s a good call, since listening to all of this in Ibsen’s play is about as absorbing as testimony about the paperwork in Trump’s falsifying-of-documents trial.
Krogstad shows up needing a job, competing with Nora’s recently widowed schoolmate Mrs. Linde (Mildred Marie Langford); blackmail ensues, after which Torvald (Mr. Never-A-Borrower-Nor-A-Lender-Be) verbally savages his wife for her immaturity and poor judgement. He’s also mortified by any kind of potential scandal. Meanwhile, Nora’s not-so-secret admirer, Dr. Rank (Peter James Smith), faces his own death, adding a tinge of mortality that desperate Nora appears at times to envy.
Of Bergman’s 15 scenes, there’s one that’s really, really interesting because it’s so universal. It’s the “I’m leaving you, I must discover who I am, for myself, by myself, and you can’t help me” scene, what Lee Breuer, in his 2003 adaptation for Mabou Mines, called “the anthem.” The pathos approaches tragedy when the once mighty Torvald pleads with his wife for a second chance, and she’ll have none of it.
This is just my taste, but Breuer’s version truly belonged to our century. This version doesn’t. Breuer had Grieg piano pieces playing throughout. He cast Torvald with a “small person” (Mark Povinelli), and Nora with the six-foot Amazonian Maude Mitchell: instant role reversal. Torvald’s “superiority” looked, visually, every bit as absurd at it deserved. Nora opened that production by bringing in a dollhouse that people could actually crawl inside. And they did. Their living room contained no living room drama. It was a puppet show from the get-go. Jaw-dropping.
At Antaeus, Watson serves us traditional Norwegian-flavored costumes (Terri A. Lewis) from the end of the 19th century, and a performance style to match. There are flourishes of abstraction that set it apart from our local TV/theater aesthetic. Tesshi Nakagawa’s set, for example, contains no doors — until one materializes at play’s end for the express purpose of having Nora walk through it, into her new life, sans employment or prospects. People appear through gaps in the walls, as though walking through them. That’s kind of pleasing, if one is to take this version as a manifestation of Nora’s psyche. Jared A. Sayeg’s lighting bathes the stage in a blue-green wash, as through dripping down from the walls onto the floor. Between scenes, his lights beam stark shadows of rafters and window frames, while composer Ellen Mandel’s original music of chimes and xylophone grows increasingly dissonant as the walls close in (proverbially) around Nora.
But the main reason this production is worth seeing is Jocelyn Towne’s performance in the title role. It’s utterly idiosyncratic and internal — as though water is slowly heating somewhere within her abdomen, until it reaches a boiling point. There’s no shrieking. No emoting. Rather, this is a soft-spoken almost muffled Nora, all twitches, as though she’s trying to contain the unbridle forces of a world spinning, ever faster, beyond her control. And because her Nora is a control-freak, her attempt to arrest coils that are bursting within her is both a muted and Quixotic exercise, almost agonizing to watch, as it should be. I’ve never seen a Nora quite like this. And it’s this production’s strongest virtue.
Antaeus Theatre Company, 110 East Broadway, Glendale; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. Mon., 8 p.m. thru May 26. https://antaeus.org/show-details/nora; running time, 100 minutes with no intermission
