4th Wall’s ‘A Doll’s House Part 2’ built with a strong foundation
In 1879, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen shook up audiences with his play “A Doll’s House,” in which everyone could see the holes in the fraying Helmer marriage. Torvald Helmer infantilized his wife, Nora, and she couldn’t stick to the traditional script of her times.
The result: she walks out, leaving her husband and children, ostensibly never to return.
Fast forward 15 years in the storyto Lucas Hnath’s Tonynominated sequel, where Nora returns to the Helmer house and confronts the unresolved issues her departure left hanging years ago.
Directed by Alanna Dorset, the play has an intriguing juxtaposition of a minimalist period setting and 19th-century costumes with dialogue and diction that is strikingly contemporary. Maybe that is the point: no matter what century you are dressed in, these issues are on the cultural radar.
Kim Tobin-Lehl is striking and confident as Nora, who has gone on to become a successful feminist writer. Her performance is impressive, as this is a challenging role on several levels: First, she has intricate lines with elaborate arguments, but they seem natural and believable on the stage. Second, we have Ibsen’s ghost hanging around the play, making us reconcile the Nora who left in 1879 with the Nora
who returns to her former home to face Torvald, her abandoned daughter, and the unforgettable Anne Marie (played by Houston acting icon Sally Edmundson).
Anne Marie not only raised Nora but also Nora’s children after she left. She tells Nora, “A lot of people think you’re dead!” It’s a funny moment — also meaning a lot of people think Nora’s ideas are dead. Sometimes it is like watching a tennis match as the characters go back and forth, volleying their ideas about a progressive future versus the predictable past. But Anne Marie’s commitment to Torvald and the Helmer children cannot be dismissed. As she tells Nora at
one point, “There’s the door. I know you know how to use it.”
Anne Marie’s sacrifices are an important reminder that while Nora gets famous for her feminism, she is able to do so because of the selfless traditionalism of another. And that is the best thing about this play: It never takes one side completely but offers a kaleidoscopic view of the difficulties of both traditional marriage and the rejection of it. You can literally see multiple points of view and identify with them as the scenes unfold. This doesn’t mean the audience cannot make up its mind: It means that there is an actual debate going on in this drama that allows the audience to do so independently. How refreshing is that?
Philip Lehl is a completely relatable Torvald, someone who dramatizes the toll his wife’s leaving could have on him but also demonstrates the perfect cocktail of justified anger along with some empathy and understanding about why the marriage failed and Nora’s point of view. Newcomer Judith Igwilo (Emmy, their daughter) was a breath of fresh air as she meets Nora for the first time. Like Nora, she too, has an agenda, and it was a deliciously satisfactory dramatic irony that, although Nora and Emmy have such opposing views on things such as marriage, they shared such strikingly similar traits, despite not being together in a traditional household for 15 years. After all, Emmy doesn’t know what marriage is because Nora left, and the audience knows it.
This sounds like a heavy play, and it is. But there is comic relief that brings levity when needed. Nora makes a lot of sense as she argues for absolute freedom and critiques the institutional flaws of marriage. But then again, so does her daughter Emmy when she explains why she wants to get married more than anything in this world.
But as Nora points out, “people change over time,” and regardless of the intricate plot twists in this play, you can leave thinking that there is something to be said for the freedom to choose any path you want, whether it is lonely and subversive, or more traditional. Maybe that is the “big epiphany” of this clever sequel to Ibsen’s masterpiece — you can choose.