At more than a few points during Jamie Lloyd’s hypnotic Broadway revival of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, you could swear that stars Jessica Chastain and Succession‘s Arian Moayed are confiding in you, whispering their secrets to no one else. This stark, sometimes chilly production is an eavesdropper’s paradise, so intimate and conversational that all but the most guarded among us will be immune to its frequent enticements.
Perhaps “most guarded” isn’t fair. There are others who might resist the show’s languid entreaties. Any aversion to minimalism or even the vaguely avant-garde might spur disappointment in this production. There are no period costumes here, no homey 19th century furnishings or Christmas trees in sight. This Doll’s House, opening tonight at the Hudson Theatre, is as much suggestion as action, our main character seated in a chair throughout nearly all of the play, even when she dances.
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But anyone willing to give in to the wily charms and stealthy spell of this stark, thoughtful production will find a singular Broadway experience, a smart and captivating experiment in the power of the voice to transport us to places both far away and deep inside the human psyche.
Much of the credit for this enticement belongs to playwright Amy Herzog, whose adaptation of the groundbreaking 1879 marriage story gives just enough of a contemporary spin – our protagonist Nora delights at the prospect of acquiring “tons of money” – without sacrificing the emotional heft or power of more traditionally rendered translations.
Among other things, Herzog’s adaptation, along with the exacting direction of Jamie Lloyd, poses the question: When is a door slam not a door slam? This revival finds the perfect answer.
On Soutra Gilmour’s spare, unfurnished – save for a chair or two – and rather ominous set, Chastain, her breathtaking beauty amplified by a gorgeous lighting design (courtesy Jon Clark) that might call to mind those classic Hollywood George Hurrell portraits, is seated in one of those straight-back chairs before the play proper even begins. As the stage’s circular center slowly revolves, an expressionless, seated Chastain is carried right along with it, her Nora on display from every angle, a manifestation of the metaphorical pedestal on which the character is so famously trapped.
Nora, of course, is the wife of the domineering Torvald (Moayed, who plays conniving Stewy on Succession). Torvald is a walking, talking example of what we’d now call gaslighting, using the expressions of love and worship to keep his trophy wife – a crass modern term that writer Herzog would never stoop to – both under his thumb and on display.
Nora’s initial willingness to stay just where her husband wants her is crucial to the development of the plot, and Chastain plays it beautifully, her expressions and inflections giving just the barest hints of a deep dissatisfaction.
So first, that plot: Set in Norway during Ibsen’s time, A Doll’s House contains – literally and metaphorically – Nora Helmer, an outwardly happy and seemingly “perfect” wife of up-and-comer bank executive Torvald, whose new job comes with a hefty salary and a considerable profile. After years of financial struggle and want, the Helmers see their dreams of security and comfort just on the horizon – it’s Christmastime, and a New Year of great promise is approaching.
But Nora isn’t all she seems (she’s much more, actually). For starters, she has a secret that, if known, could destroy Torvald’s fledgling career and the outwardly happy family life (the Helmers have two small children that are heard but not seen in this production).
We learn the secret early on, when Nora – Chastain in that chair, facing the audience, for most of the play – reveals to her visiting childhood friend Kristine (Jesmille Darbouze) that, in order to secure the funds needed for a recent doctor-ordered family vacation to restore Torvald’s failing health, she borrowed money from a loan shark whose day job is at the bank where Torvald is on the rise, and Torvald, if he knew, would be both appalled and infuriated. Like, end-of-the-marriage infuriated.
And all would be fine if only an unknowing Torvald hadn’t just fired the employee-shark (Okieriete Onaodowan), who now comes nosing around the Helmer holiday home with visions of blackmail dancing in his head.
As Nora’s world ever-so-slowly begins to crumble around her, she’s driven to a back-against-the-wall despair so great that suicide seems to be the only solution. She imagines the black, icy depths of the river in a way that seems both terrifying and, given the cramped limitations of her life, oddly freeing.
Given that the play was written in 1879, spoiler alerts hardly seem necessary, but just in case, Spoiler Alert. She doesn’t do it.
Instead, when Torvald reads the blackmailer’s letter and responds with the expected outrage and blame, Nora experiences freedom of an entirely different sort, a freedom that comes only with the revelation of truth. Recognizing both her own unhappiness and the damned-if-they-do-or-don’t restrictions of women in society – her only alternative to illicitly borrowing that money was watching her husband die – Nora abandons her husband and her children, an act shocking in the play’s day (and, at least the children part, still pretty gut-punching even today).
Theatrical tradition has Nora, in her final act of liberation, literally slamming the door on her old life, an iconic stage moment impossible to pull off on the bare Hudson Theatre stage, so director Lloyd and scenic designer Gilmour have to come up with an alternative coup de theatre for Nora’s exit, and it’s a beauty. Sorry, this time no spoilers for real.
The excellent cast – including Tasha Lawrence as nanny Anne-Marie and Michael Patrick Thornton as the doomed, besotted Dr. Rank – is dressed in black and moves gracefully (or sometimes is moved, on that revolving floor) around the stage like so many chess pieces (Jennifer Rias is the play’s choreographer; the droning, ambient music from Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto sets the disquieting mood). Whether facing the audience, the back wall or anywhere in between, every position suggests something larger about each character’s relation to the others. Only once, late in the play, do Nora and Torvald sit side by side, their physical closeness reflecting a breakthrough in candor if not romance.
The honesty, though, is too little, too late for this marriage, and Nora’s self-actualization will seem to strike a bit too abruptly if you haven’t been studying Chastain’s expressions. Her face registers the gamut of Nora’s feelings, from nervous forced satisfaction through a waning confidence that her physical beauty will see her through anything. We watch as Nora evolves (or devolves) from the smug superiority she lauds over her broke, widowed friend Kristine through the panic of a law-breaker caught in her own deceptions and, finally, to the scary, thrilling liberation of freedom as nothing left to lose.
Every bit Chastain’s equal is Moayed, whose Mr. Helmer is only slightly less sinister than the sexist creep Torvalds we’ve seen before. His suffocating condescension is slow to boil, but boil it does, erupting at last in a misogynist expletive that breaks the production’s sotto voce calm with a startling force.
Darbouze, as Nora’s friend, conveys compassion even as she sees right through her old pal’s self-deceptions, while Onaodowan as the loan shark Krogstad gradually and delicately reveals a depth we didn’t expect. So, too, does Lawrence as the nanny Anne-Marie, her own past containing its share of secrets and heartbreaks.
Perhaps best of all is Thornton, whose terminally ill Dr. Rank – he suffers from a lifetime of bad health inherited from a syphilitic father – can’t hide an abiding if inevitably soul-crushing love for the married Nora. It’s through his eyes and devotion that we most fully comprehend Nora’s spell-casting appeal. Whether the two deeply committed friends are engaging in small talk or something more, their love – platonic for one, romantic for the other – is truer than anything in Nora’s farce of a marriage.
To make matters even clearer, Chastain and Thornton seem to modulate their voices – deeply sonorous and mesmerizingly languid – to match the other, their heartfelt conversations taking on a nearly narcotic tone of tranquil intimacy. Their bond, as Ibsen, Herzog and Lloyd want us to know, is just another missed opportunity at an honest life, another path that could have been taken but wasn’t. Conceding defeat to time’s bygone chances requires the strength to slam more than a door or two, even when the slamming makes no sound louder than an audience’s startled gasp.
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