THE 1041C Theater Reviews

On the whole, the reading of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House did a decent job of capturing the thematic elements of the play, despite its abridged nature. The two leads I thought were portrayed accurately, showing the development of the Nora character, while also portraying Torvald as a sympathetic figure, which is difficult in our time of evanescing patriarchy. However the function of Mrs. Lind in the reading was mitigated. The qualifying preface from the older gentlemen pertaining to the transformation of the four main forces in the play aided the audience’s understanding. By viewing the play through this interpretation one is able to observe the subtle, eventually interloping, contrasts between the two female roles and the two male roles.

I felt the eventual revealing of Torvald’s world and status as one of deception was abrupt. I can imagine that the downplaying of Nora’s perceptual transformation did serve one function for an audience that has not observed the work before, the heightening of suspense. However I feel it is both Torvald’s realization of Nora’s dissidence, and Nora’s realization of his guise of bourgeois social status that make the tome one of the best narratives casted after the well-made play template. It has a double realization, to which both characters try to moralize their actions. These scenes were well recapitulated, which I found important. The sense of melodrama, which validates Nora’s final decision to abandon her family, was put across but more in an aesthetic way than a narrative one. Her situation is more relatable to a modern audience however and perhaps urges less cogency in its outcome. The claustrophobic single set of the play transferred well to the unadorned stage, which came across as cluttered with five people, chairs, and script stands, but in a good suffocating way.