A Doll’s House, Part 2

If you’ve wondered what Ibsen’s Nora Helmer did after she slammed that door and left her husband and three children, this sequel gives an answer.  An answer.  It’s fifteen years later and Nora (Marta Dusseldorp) returns – through that very same door.  She’s discovered that her husband Torvald (Greg Stone) never filed for divorce which means that they are still married and (under Norwegian law of the time, say 1895) she is in legal difficulties and could lose everything she has achieved over those fifteen years of independence.

Lucas Hnath’s continuation of Nora’s story reduces the number of characters and dispenses with Ibsen’s layered plot in order to concentrate on the issues: freedom, independence, self-discovery, the patriarchy and responsibility for the care and nurture of children.  The play becomes a series of two-hander debates in which – in a rather Shavian manner – all points of view and positions have validity and each debate is labelled with the name of Nora’s antagonist projected above the stage.

Nora’s first encounter is with housekeeper Anne Marie (Diedre Rubenstein), the nanny who brought up Nora’s abandoned children.  Anne Marie’s initial warmth is soon displaced by her more real feelings: incomprehension and resentment.  Torvald returns earlier than expected and so we move into Round Two.  Later, the youngest of Nora’s children, Emmy (Zoe Terakes) appears.  She’s a very self-possessed young woman already engaged to be married.  Without a trace of sentiment, since Nora is a complete stranger to her, Emmy runs the case for marriage.

There’s a clear intention too, I believe, to make these issues contemporary (which they are, after all) by having the characters in late 19^th century clothing but speaking as if they are our contemporaries.  For instance, Anne Marie: ‘I’m really pissed off with you, Nora.’ 

A series of debates, however, is in keeping with the playwright’s intention and designer Tracey Grant Lord’s set follows his directions.  He specifies that ‘the play takes place in a room… quite spare… it ought to feel a touch like a forum.’  So, the set is almost bare – a side table, a chest, two chairs and that door a central feature.  It’s not a home – or the home that Nora left; it’s a space for contending ideas. 

But fifteen minutes in, I found myself thinking (perhaps unfairly), ‘Yes, I know all this: Nora and Anne Marie are saying exactly what we expect them to say.’  There’s almost an obligatory feel to some of the women’s speeches here – as if this and that must be said because it would be.  This feeling dominates despite the fact that the reliably lovely Ms Rubenstein wrings every bit of humour and emotion from her character and then, later, Ms Terakes’ Emmy stands her ground with such youthful certainty.  But both are positions, as it were, rather than characters.

Curiously, however, Ms Dusseldorp, usually a performer of great presence, opts for a rather busy and – to my mind – over-emphatic take on Nora: rapid fire dialogue while moving restlessly about the stage in a manner that feels just a little false.  Is this how director Sarah Goodes wants to convey a spirited Nora’s growth as a character, or her nervousness and agitation at being back in the home she left?  Or is it her and Ms Dusseldorp’s attempt to enliven the text?

I really don’t like to say this, given the subject matter of the debates, the validity of the arguments and the playwright’s over-riding feminist intentions, but emotion – and therefore drama – arrive on stage with Mr Stone’s Torvald.  As an actor, Mr Stone has a great ability to draw focus but here, of course, we can’t help being interested in a character who is not so certain.  Torvald is just better written, not in the strength of his arguments, but because he is a more engaging dramatic character.

Yes, Ibsen’s Torvald is the archetypal patronising husband, who calls Nora ‘my little squirrel’ and tells her woman can’t think, so with this Part 2 we have to believe that in fifteen years he has changed – or at least become susceptible to changing.  He comes to see himself as she does.  Not that he agrees, but he wishes to redeem himself, to not be the man as characterised by Nora.  The last is quite a trick given that she walked out on him and three young children.  But Mr Stone makes us believe those things via self-deprecation, a little humour but principally via emotion.  And, interestingly, with him, Nora becomes more honest so that we feel for her and her struggle.  

A Doll’s House, Part 2is an impeccably well-intentioned piece, but since it wears its intentions on its sleeve, at the end we feel just a little like a lesson is over.  In 1879, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House – Part 1 – shocked the audiences of its time.  There is a clear rehearsal of the issues, which were implicit in the original, but we are not too shocked or even made uncomfortable by this Part 2.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Jeff Busby