Review of "A Doll's House Part II"

play review

A Doll’s House Part II

I went to see this play, because I got a free ticket.  I wouldn’t have otherwise even have noticed it, I don’t think.  I never saw the first play.  I had to quickly read a synopsis on wikipedia so that I would feel comfortable looking at a sequel.  The synopsis on wikipedia said something about it being the most performed play in 2006, but the sequel is by a different author from the original.

I saw afterwards that there are notices that the play is ending September 24.  I guess they weren’t getting enough ticket sales.  Maybe that’s why I got a free ticket.  Nevertheless, the theater seemed quite full. 

These theaters should be looking at the fact that it’s the week after Labor Day, so people aren’t traveling, and, moreover, some parts of the country are encountering overwhelming natural disasters right now that are impeding travel — and next week might be different — before making play closing decisions.

There were a number of interesting points about this play

No Intermission:

It's only 1.5 hours, so they don't do intermission.  There's an ominous warning in the program that if you leave to go to the bathroom you will not be allowed back in.  So be sure and go before the show starts.

Diversity:

1. There were 4 roles, of which 3 were for women.  This is great.  The vast majority of roles out there are for men, yet the vast majority of applicants for acting parts are women.  It’s wonderful to see a play with this ratio, which reflects the applicant pool.

2. There were 2 roles for older women.  This is also wonderful, as most roles for women are for younger women — and I’m an older woman into acting so I care about this.

3. One of the roles was filled by an overweight actress with grey hair.  That’s amazing — and wonderful.  Normally men who are performing are allowed to be overweight with grey hair, but women aren’t, seemingly

4. The husband character, despite allegedly being Scandinavian, was played by a light skinned mixed race actor — also a wonderful example of diversity casting.

Set
         The whole thing took place in one room with 4 chairs.  Very stark.  Sometimes the names of characters were projected on the wall, when those characters were more prominent.  The starkness of the set was part of what led me to believe that this was going to be a serious even tragic play, but that was a wrong assumption

Costumes:
         Nora’s costume was as amazing as the set was stark — absolutely beautiful.  The other performers were wearing fairly plain clothes, typical of that period

Acting:

         This was the part that I found most interesting — the acting — as there was something odd about it.  You may wonder, then, why I leave this for almost last if it was the most interesting.  That is because I was trying to figure out what I would say as I’m still puzzled about it.  There was something jarring about the delivery — funny perhaps, but jarring. 
    I guess because of the retro costumes I expected a kind of retro acting, where the actors would have some kind of accent, maybe an old movie star accent or maybe a Scandinavian accent — but they didn’t.  They sounded very contemporary American. The actor playing Torvald did contrast interestingly with the other actors, because he had a slight African American lilt to his speaking. 
    There was a comic aspect to the delivery as well, which contrasted with the rather serious/severe clothing and the stark set.  I guess I don’t expect people in Victorian clothes to be funny, maybe.  It was startling to see women, presumably in corsets, to be so relaxed.  Maybe they didn’t really have corsets.  Maybe they were just very skinny.  Maybe that was it. 
    Also, I would have expected the maid character to be deferential to her former boss, but she wasn’t.  Nora seemed to expect some kind of deference from the maid, but didn’t get any.

Theme (spoilers)
    There wasn’t really an ending the way one thinks of an ending in a more traditional musical theater piece, where you come out with some message.  There’s just these people being in their space.  I hoped maybe the maid and Torvald might get together, but no.  There wasn’t any kind of resolution.
    All the way through I was wondering whether the play was glorifying Nora and her having abandoned her children to go off and have a more fun life for herself.  Ultimately, I think not.  I think that was just her character’s point of view.  Still, I spent a lot of the time thinking that no it’s not ok to abandon your children to indulge yourself, and no they’ll never get over it and no feminism doesn’t justify it at all.
    Also, the strange daughter who comes off as pleased at having been abandoned, I guess being sort of self-rationalizing, like her mother, which she fit in well to the atmosphere of the play, seemed inauthentic and unconvincing to me.
  
   
Conclusion   
    I can’t say I really enjoyed this play.  Still, I thought it was a good thing for me to see: an interesting example of the sort of thing I would never go see on my own, and therefore educational. Normally, my speed is more Marvel Comics movies. This might be too high brow for me. I feel like, while I followed the thing literally, it might have been over my head.

Trying to summarize: oddly jarring, yet sometimes funny; strangely familiar, yet alien.
   
P.S. to the actors who played Torvald and the Maid:  I really recommend that you visit this website: oa.org