Amy Herzog’s newest adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House works soundly in this Canadian Stage production now playing at Toronto’s Front Street Bluma Appel Theatre.
The patriarchal world of A Doll’s House becomes stifling for protagonist, Nora (Hailey Gillis). She and her husband, Torvald (Gray Powell), have been married for eight years and have two children: Ivar (Athan Giazitzidis) and Emmy (Vera Deodato). While the Christmas season is upon them, daily life has been challenging for the household; however, Torvald has been recently appointed the manager of a savings bank, much to Nora’s utter delight. She likes to spend money. She wants to be the perfect wife and mother, yet at one point expects the housekeeper Anne-Marie (Elizabeth Saunders) to mind the children.
Secrets upon secrets abide in the relationship between the couple. To complicate matters further, there is Torvald’s best friend, Dr. Rank (David Collins), who visits daily and has an interesting connection to the couple. With the arrival of longtime friend Kristine (Laura Condlln) and the gruff associate Krogstad (Jamie Robinson), Nora’s world descends into a tumultuous upheaval of deceit, as more lies spin out of control in an attempt to keep the truth from Torvald.
What makes this adaptation strong? Thankfully, the dialogue is contemporary and modern. This choice is extremely important if one is to keep the 19th- and 20th-century iconic theatre classics relevant for 21st-century audiences.
Solid choices have been made which create a strong visual sense of presentation. Everything appears to be on show. Kevin Lamotte’s careful balance of light and shadow in Gillian Gallows’ suffocating set design immediately draws attention. The dining room, meant to be a place for people to talk and listen over a communal meal, feels like the exact opposite in this gold-framed picture. The room feels claustrophobic thanks to the overpowering colour red. The room is set in a corner, which becomes an important symbol as the play continues, since Nora will back herself into a corner many times when things do not go as she plans. Gallows’ costume designs aptly evoke the late 1870s.
Maintaining a brisk pace to keep the story moving, director Brendan Healy makes some intriguing choices in this Doll’s House. For one, it appears that marriage and the family unit have become a strong focus. Last year, Healy directed the Edward Albee classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in which an older couple draws a younger couple into a vortex of a head-spinning, alcoholic gaze in confusing contemporary times. Without the alcohol, it appears that Healy once again focuses on the spinning, confusing times of a patriarchal Ibsen world that will soon come crashing down on the protagonist.
Healy doesn’t want the audience to despise the characters. Instead, he wants us to feel deep pity and empathy for they feel there is no way out of the world they know. All these characters know is how to maintain a sense of presentation and how to behave in a certain way.
The cast excels.
Laura Condlln is strong as Nora’s longtime friend, Kristine. While Nora may tease Kristine unthinkingly about who has the worse life between the two of them (the latter is a widow still hurting over her husband’s death), it is Condlln’s Kristine who serves as the voice of logic and reason when Nora becomes rattled by events involving Torvald and Krogstad. Jamie Robinson as Krogstad commands the stage with menace, never overplaying melodramatically. David Collins’ Dr. Rank remains that sturdy rock of support for Torvald. However, Collins, with a surprising and knowing wink, catches the audience off guard with behaviour that draws a few uncomfortable gasps when reality sets in about what is happening.
Despite Torvald’s knowledge of his wife’s petty weaknesses and idiosyncrasies (that she likes to spend money frivolously), Gray Powell gives a structured performance as a man so brutally self-absorbed in his own world and business that it’s laughable he doesn’t see the truth about Nora in front of his eyes until it’s too late. The odd momentary laughter from the audience seems to recognize this very fact about Powell’s Torvald.
Hailey Gillis is marvellous. Her Nora is petty, headstrong, longing and yearning. She’s smart, clever and seductive (the after-party seduction between Powell and Gillis remains highly sensual). She knows how to be and how to behave with certain people. Yet that reality finally catches up with the defeated protagonist.
The final moment in the play between Powell and Gillis, as the two listen to and hear each other, probably for the first time in their married life, is brutally and genuinely honest in their emotional reactions, revealing how Gillis’s Nora truly feels about the only world she has known forever and if she will ever be able to escape it.
It’s rare to get to see an Ibsen play done anymore.
When it’s performed with integrity, technique, and understanding, said Ibsen will make for a terrific afternoon or evening at the theatre.
That’s exactly what happens with this Doll’s House.
Running time: approximately 90 minutes with no interval/intermission.
The production runs until February 1 at the Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front Street East, Toronto. For tickets: canadianstage.com or call (416) 368-3110.
CANADIAN STAGE presents
A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen and adapted by Amy Herzog
Directed by Brendan Healy
Set and Costume: Gillian Gallow
Lighting Design: Kevin Lamotte
Sound Design and Original Music: Deanna H. Choi
Intimacy Director: Siobhan Richardson
Stage Manager: Anna Kaltenbach
Performers: Hailey Gillis, Gray Powellk, Jamie Robinson, Laura Condlln, David Collins, Elizabeth Saunders, Athamn Giazitzidis, Vera Deodato
