Presentation of classic more than clever
Nora and Torvald Helmer have arrived at the terminus of their marriage, though he doesn’t know how final Nora’s departure will be. The conversation that precedes her leave- taking comes at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.”
Performed by Marianna McClellan and Michael Shantz at the Denver Center’s Ricketson Theatre, this clash of two very different realizations — hers of, if not possibility, some measure of freedom; his of personal and societal failure — makes for a near indelible scene. To this day, it remains among the finest exchanges in theater, offering fresh ways to understand Ibsen’s time and place — and fathom our own.
No wonder the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of Frank McGuinness’s much- hailed version of “A Doll’s House” — directed here by Chris Coleman — seems at times to hurtle toward the visionary throwdown. There are moments when that haste skates over the affronts that lead to Nora’s exit.
At the play’s start, Nora whirls into her and Torvald’s home, laden with Christmas presents for their three children and others, and giddy. ( Beyond giddy, actually.)
At the play’s end, dressed in a lavender power ensemble to die for ( costume designer Meghan Anderson Doyle outdoes herself), Nora takes her leave with a striding purpose and punctuates it with a legendary, off- stage, slam of the door.
It is that emphatic sound that provides the set- up for Lucas Hnath’s biting comedic sequel “Doll’s House, Part 2.”
At its best, the Denver Center’s one- two punch of presenting “A Doll’s House” and “Doll’s House, Part 2” in repertory — the first company to do so — is more than clever. It’s provocatively instructive and, especially with its smart and tart production of Hnath’s response to Ibsen’s call, artistically gratifying.
The household setting for “Doll’s House” is rich with the trappings of burgeoning wealth. With its ornate rugs, fine furniture and walls of family portraits and artwork, the living room suggests the home of a man going places.
Christmas is nearing and the new year will bring with it a new job at a bank for Torvald. His pretty wife is abuzz, already spending future earnings. Tall and starchy, he spends a great deal of time behind the doors that lead to his study. When he surfaces, he speaks to Nora with a tone that’s condescending, proprietary, affectionate. Money is a theme: He makes it, she spends it. She must ask for it; he grants it.
It takes the arrival of Nora’s childhood friend Christina ( Anastasia Davidson), a widow looking to remake a life for herself, for it to be revealed that Torvald wouldn’t be where he is were it not for the machinations of his “silly girl,” his “little bird who likes to fritter money.”
Another arrival — unwelcome and unnerving — makes it clear that some of that flitting is not out of frivolity but out of fear. Nils Krogstad ( Zachary Andrews) and Nora share a secret sure to upend Torvald’s unchallenged sense of his perfectly achieved household.
The marketing material for the shows cleverly presents Nora’s image as the comedy- tragedy masks to represent the two productions. Only this “Doll’s House” feels light on the tragedy, or at least lacking the weight of Nora’s conflicting feelings. An exchange between Nora and her husband’s oldest friend, Dr. Rank ( Leif Norby) provides one of the few moments of textured emotion, less the result of McClennan’s approach to her character’s manic moods than the play’s pacing.
Even so, it’s hard not to admire Ibsen all over again when reminded he based “A Doll’s House” on the actual story of a Norwegian wife who came to the rescue of her husband — quite literally — by forging a check. Society and her husband meted out a comeuppance that was ruinous. Through Nora, Ibsen has written that woman a bolder and gentler ( at least more open) ending. One that held a mirror up to society and shifted some of the punishment onto Torvald.
In “Doll’s House, Part 2” a seemingly triumphant Nora returns to the household she left 15 years earlier. She has a purpose.
Now a successful author, she turned her woes into a series of books. The first was a bestselling Roman à clef about a married woman leaving her husband and the challenges and liberation that came from that exit. But in a pre- Internet bit of “gotcha culture,” an embittered husband with no small amount of resources finds out who the woman behind the pseudonym is and threatens to expose her as a fraud. It turns out Torvald never divorced her.
The opening of “Part 2” struts its wit and strangeness immediately. What ended with a slam starts out with a knock at the door — a rather persistent one. The tick- tocking of an unseen clock slows, as does the caretaker as she approaches the door. Anne- Marie ( Leslie O’Carroll) was Nora’s nanny and then watcher of the three children Nora abandoned.
There’s really no other way to describe it. That is precisely what Nora did: abandoned not just Torvald, but her children. How we feel about her reasons for leaving — and her return — make for some fine issues to gnaw on.
Scenic designer Lisa Orzolek’s well- appointed living room from “A Doll’s House” has been stripped bare here. Two accent chairs covered with white sheets sit in a corner. With the outlines of missing family paintings, it hints at a crime scene. And before the play ends, a forensic investigation of the death of a marriage will have taken place.
The series of frank têteàtêtes — between Nora and Anne- Marie, Nora and daughter Emmy, Nora and Torvald — unfold in a space of Ibsen’s making but also beyond that time, a heady ( and amusing) place.
Doors close or swing open without human touch. Fog wafts forth from a doorway. Anne- Marie’s salty language makes sure we don’t carry over our sense of the original’s time period. Even Emmy’s age doesn’t quite jibe. If her mother left when she was an infant, then wouldn’t she be closer to 16? All suggests a less
“real” space. Then there are the chimes, which tinkle like an invitation to the audience to contemplate what they have witnessed or are about to.
As Anne- Marie, O’Carroll’s playful- serious performance of the stalwart does a deft job of reminding us, the way comedies so often do, that the most aware people in the room are often “the help.” “I never wanted anything bad to happen to you,” she says to the fashion- plated Nora in a wonderfully blustery voice. Strike that “never” and get at a psychological truth.
As Nora’s friend Kristine in “A Doll’s House,” Davidson is somewhat flat. In “Part 2,” she enlivens Emmy’s testy estimation of her mother with the fleet delivery of the young woman’s too- clever- forherage observations.
When he emerges from his study, this Torvald seems cut down to size. Played by Leif Norby, he’s more sympathetic for the pruning. If, that is, you like your men passive- aggressive. It’s fair to wonder if, in not legally divorcing Nora, Torvald somehow engineered the necessity of her return.
After his and Nora’s first prickly talk, Torvald leaves the house. When he goes, Anne- Marie and Nora begin bickering about the choices they’ve made in the intervening years, the livelihoods that would have been threatened had they behaved otherwise. It, too, feels a little like a feat of male- engineering, these recriminations.
Barbra Wengerd’s performance as Nora is sly. To take her at her word about her 15 years, she is more Samantha from “Sex in the City” than Carrie. She recounts the self- discoveries and professional triumphs to a dozing Anne- Marie. But she really directs her account at the audience with conspiratorial intimacy. How smoothly Wengred takes a seat at the edge of the Ricketson Theatre’s stage, how impressively ingratiating.
“Part 2” concludes with Nora and Torvald conversing. Déjà vu all over again? Not quite. The sight of the two of them sitting side- by- side on the floor of what was an overstuffed, now- emptied “doll’s house” is touching. They are not defeated. Exactly. But Hnath has rendered them oh- so- human and familiar. Their woes and epiphanies, the slammed doors and bitter shouts, the reflections and regrets are ours. “Part 3,” anyone?