Nora's back: Ibsen's heroine returns in APT's 'A Doll's House, part 2'

By Lindsay Christians, The Cap Times, October 20, 2019. 

When the door opens at the start of American Players Theatre’s production of “A Doll’s House, part 2,” it’s been 140 years, 15 years or 17 days since Nora left, depending on how you measure.

When Norwegian realist playwright Henrik Ibsen debuted “A Doll’s House” in 1879, the ending was explosive. A wealthy young woman, trapped by societal restrictions that didn’t allow her to vote, hold credit or sign a contract without her husband’s approval, leaves her family. Her youngest daughter is still in diapers, but Nora is a stranger in her own home. She cannot stay. 

More than a century later, another playwright, Lucas Hnath (“Hillary and Clinton,” “The Christians”), wondered what happened to Nora after she went through that door. Hnath found an English translation of the play on a free website and tried writing it over in his own words.

Hnath told a newspaper in Aspen that he was “struck by the debate that begins at the end of the play and how that debate has just started. ... Torvald’s response is a bit dumb. If he had more time to think it through and craft a finer argument, what would Nora say? And then what would happen? And that seemed to be a reason to write the play.”

Hnath set “A Doll’s House, part 2” 15 years after Nora left. It opens at APT in previews on Wednesday, Oct. 24, in the Touchstone Theatre.

That’s 17 days after a production of “A Doll’s House,” directed by Keira Fromm, closed in the same space, starring Kelsey Brennan and Nate Burger as Nora and Torvald.

“We’re using the same house. I used the same set designers,” said Brenda DeVita, APT’s artistic director, who also directs “part 2.” Hnath uses poetic, contemporary language, and APT’s design also aims to bring elements of past and present together.

“We’re coming back to a place that’s different but very much the same,” DeVita said. Designer Raquel Adorno included “a contemporary moment in each of the costumes, so we can honor the fact that it is 1894, but the language of the play is very contemporary,” DeVita said.

Nora has returned because she needs Torvald to give her a divorce. She can’t get one on her own unless she proves he abused her, and she has no desire to lie. 

“A married woman couldn’t get a job, couldn’t sign a contract without the consent of her husband, and at the time that was normal,” said Colleen Madden, the APT core acting company member who plays Nora. “That’s what we forget today. We look at her radical acts and say that’s too much, you’ve hurt too many people. But women didn’t have rights we consider basic human rights.”

Madden saw the previous production, but she’s not mimicking Brennan’s Nora in speech or gesture. She wants to look deeper. 

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