THE 1041C Theater Reviews

The first thing I noticed once I sat down was how much more leg space I had in the Baruch Performing Arts Center than in the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. I was able to sit semi-comfortably and not lose circulation in my legs throughout the entire performance. Aside from not losing blood circulation, I also did not lose my interest during the play.

For a production that had very little to work with the performance was extraordinary. I would have to admit that it put the staged reading of Medea to shame. Almost everything was of better quality, from the actors’ skills to the play itself.

The actors all presented themselves at a professional level. They made certain that their skills were known. Every actor played their part believably and together they made the play come to life. I did not feel like I was watching a staged production, I felt as if I was sitting in on a person’s life. Each actor stuck to the personality of their character throughout the performance: Antoinette LaVecchia who played Nora channeled a silly and ditzy housewife while Christopher Burns who played Helmar channeled a manly bacon-bringing husband. The actors were very convincing of the realness of their characters.

In terms of stage space and technique, the actors used stands to hold their scripts. This made it easier for them to flip pages but it rooted them to a single spot. This caused the actors to make up for a lack of stage use with their emotions. There were moments where the actors seemed to overreact but those moments did not ruin the flow of the play. Also, to make up for a lack of props and actors the narrator played odd-job rolls such as filling in for the role of a maid or dictating when a doorbell had rung.

Speaking of the narrator, there were breaks in between scenes of the play and during this time the narrator turned to the audience and engaged us. He asked us what we thought would happen next and made comments about the play himself. I don’t know if this was intentional but it certainly kept the audience interested and woke up a few sleeping members.

Aside from the actors, the play itself was interesting and well written. The play showed the distinct differences between a man and woman in society. The women in the play fussed over little things like the household and their clothes while the men went to work, negotiated deals and brought home money to spoil their wives with. The play also played up a woman’s use of her feminine charms. There are countless times where a woman in the play bats her eyelids and manipulates a man.

Towards the end of the play when Nora has an epiphany about her marriage and role in the household I noticed something. The play suddenly seemed choppy and too sudden. Her realization seemed to have come randomly. While I understood what led up to it, it seemed as if a chunk of the play had gone missing. It was probably because the director and cast had to cut out parts of the play to make it fit into about an hour. Although it seemed somewhat unbelievably random, the message that Nora was trying to convey was touching enough to make me dismiss the peculiarities of the scene. The “most wonderful thing of all” that Nora was hoping for stood out to me and if there is one thing in the play to remember it would be that “most wonderful thing,” to sacrifice one’s honor for love.