by Steve Black, Assistant Director
We have now brought our first week of rehearsals to a close and are off and running in our second (final week) of rehearsing! The end of the first week concluded with a run through of the entire show. It was
really great to see the whole picture and establish each character's journey through the work. This was treated as a designer run (a run through where the design staff is present so that they can better understand how their visions will be incorporated into the staging). I loved having an audience there for the first time. It is helpful to
see how people react to certain moments and get a feel for what works and what we could possibly clarify.
Aimee and Mark have been extremely compelling as they share the story of Jamie and Cathy. As is typical for any New Rep production, the audience will leave this production with a lot to contemplate. I'm interested to hear which character audience members side with. Let me know! Share your thoughts and comment on this after you see a performance.
Last night we had two cellists play for the run through. These great musicians are in addition to our wonderful musical director, Todd Gordon, on piano. The final two musicians, a violinist and guitarist, will be added tonight. Adding these instrumentalists has proven to inspire the performance choices and add a new level of nuance to the production. The orchestration, although fairly simple, is very lush and helps to add great depth to the characters. There are some interesting string harmonics and glissandi that help to create and
foreshadow tension at key moments.
Tomorrow we start tech and I'm excited to see how the lighting and costuming will continue to affect and support performance choices and intent. More info. soon. Get your tickets before they are gone!
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Last Six Days - by Mark Linehan
One of the facets of this profession that I used to find frustrating but I have learned to embrace is the understanding that no matter how long I rehearse, or how hard I work to perfect my role, I will still be able to look back ten years later and discover ways to make certain moments more active, more specific and more alive. I try my best to banish this future specter of judgment while I’m working on a new show, but it’s always been a struggle of mine. I can hide it from most directors. A particularly good director will call me out on it after a week or so. It took Jim Petosa two days.
The two characters in The Last Five Years both express a desire to escape where they are from, and to a certain extent, who they are. Jamie wishes to escape his Jewish heritage and community and Cathy wishes to overcome her small-town, blue-collar upbringing. Although one story is told forwards through time and the other goes backwards, we see how their separate histories begin to re-assert themselves as their marriage falls apart, and how a mutual desire to escape is a weak foundation for a relationship. There are many clichés that seek to define the need for change, the urge for something different, the wonder of the unknown. However, this personal battle for identity and its perceptions and realities is universal. Who am I? Where am I going? And since the only thing I am sure of is where I’ve been and where I’m from, how much does that matter? Is it a determined value or a variable that I can alter to suit my needs?
Laurence Olivier writes in his autobiography, Confessions of An Actor, that acting is not much more than convincing lying. While I must give Lord Olivier his due, I have to say that my challenge is not so much to lie well, but to be totally honest to the world of the play and its truths. However, the trick along with that is to be true to myself. I can’t allow myself to get caught up in how Jamie has been played before or how other men may play this role and I cannot allow myself to edit my own performance while I perform it. I have to be all at once accepting and embracing of who I am, who I was, and not spend time worrying about how it might turn out or be perceived. This play is about a relationship between two people. Like love, this play does not seek to boast or condemn or judge, but allows the story to unfold in the way that this relationship’s story must be told. And my full challenge is to allow myself to tell this story, while being true to Aimee and Todd and Jim and this beautiful story we’re all telling.
The two characters in The Last Five Years both express a desire to escape where they are from, and to a certain extent, who they are. Jamie wishes to escape his Jewish heritage and community and Cathy wishes to overcome her small-town, blue-collar upbringing. Although one story is told forwards through time and the other goes backwards, we see how their separate histories begin to re-assert themselves as their marriage falls apart, and how a mutual desire to escape is a weak foundation for a relationship. There are many clichés that seek to define the need for change, the urge for something different, the wonder of the unknown. However, this personal battle for identity and its perceptions and realities is universal. Who am I? Where am I going? And since the only thing I am sure of is where I’ve been and where I’m from, how much does that matter? Is it a determined value or a variable that I can alter to suit my needs?
Laurence Olivier writes in his autobiography, Confessions of An Actor, that acting is not much more than convincing lying. While I must give Lord Olivier his due, I have to say that my challenge is not so much to lie well, but to be totally honest to the world of the play and its truths. However, the trick along with that is to be true to myself. I can’t allow myself to get caught up in how Jamie has been played before or how other men may play this role and I cannot allow myself to edit my own performance while I perform it. I have to be all at once accepting and embracing of who I am, who I was, and not spend time worrying about how it might turn out or be perceived. This play is about a relationship between two people. Like love, this play does not seek to boast or condemn or judge, but allows the story to unfold in the way that this relationship’s story must be told. And my full challenge is to allow myself to tell this story, while being true to Aimee and Todd and Jim and this beautiful story we’re all telling.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Inside the Rehearsal Room: The Last Five Years
Hello everyone, this is Steve Black, assistant director for The Last Five Years, submitting my first blog. Rehearsals have been well underway for the past few days and the production is looking amazing, already. Jim Petosa, our fearless director, is helping the actors get to the heart of the piece by allowing Aimee and Mark to find the inner truth of who Jamie and Cathy are and how they behave in the many circumstances they find themselves in throughout the work. Since Aimee and Mark were so prepared and knew the music so well going into the first rehearsal, they have been able to reach an incredible amount of depth in their character work already.
In case some of you don't know, the story follows five years of a relationship between Jamie, a writer, and Cathy, an actress. The story is told forwards and backwards at the same time, backwards via Cathy, and forwards, via Jamie. The two meet for a brief moment together, living in the same time, in the middle of the work. For the rest of the show, even though the other character may be on stage, the person singing is playing to an imagined figure, or memory. We've discovered how difficult this whole timeline can get when each character presents the other with a gift, or prop. Questions prior to or after that moment, like: "do you know about this yet?, Are you wearing that yet?," keep popping up. We're being really faithful to timeline and I think that it will be really interesting for audience members to see the production and even come a second time to see if they notice little details that they maybe didn't pick up on during their first visit.
Jim discussed Jamie's life as a writer and how difficult reaching fame at a young age can be (Jamie is 23 we he begins the show). Fame can be difficult at any age. Jim referenced an essay written by Tennessee Williams about his success with The Glass Menagerie and how it changed the writer's life. Williams suggests that sometimes fame isn't for the better, but it certainly gives us perspective on life. The essay can be found online at http://truegoodbeautiful.com/uncategorized/the-catastrophe-of-success-by-tennessee-williams/
Today we will finish staging approximately three quarters of the material and then run the first twelve songs/scenes. I'm excited to see how everything flows together. I can see that things are shaping up and I know that audiences are in for a moving, heartfelt, story. More from the rehearsal room, soon!
Friday, March 04, 2011
"DollHouse": Grand Slam?
By Jack Craib, New Rep Reviewer
New Rep’s production of Theresa Rebeck’s “DollHouse”, described as a “drama based on Ibsen”, presents an audience with a couple of basic questions. At its final moment, will there be that iconic door slam heard round the world of theater? And since this is an adaptation rather than a translation, is it fair to compare it to the original? The answer to both these questions would be a resounding yes…and no.
Ibsen wrote his “A Doll House” in 1879, the sixth of what are generally accepted as his major plays. Many scholars consider it the birth of modern naturalistic drama. No less a pundit than George Bernard Shaw declared that “Nora’s revolt is the end of a chapter of human history”. It is generally considered a seminal feminist play, although it is much more than that. While Ibsen’s Nora gradually evolves from a self-described lark or squirrel to a more human being, it is at a price. Not only does she give up her home and family, but she dispenses with the parameters that society allowed. Yet she is by no means the only puppet manipulated by others’ expectations. Her husband (Torvald in the original, Evan here) is equally constrained by what he knows he must do and how he must comport himself. All of Ibsen’s characters are doll-like; they are human in form but far from free to express their human attributes.
Rebeck’s “DollHouse” takes place in a contemporary Connecticut suburb, just the first of many alterations to the Ibsen model. Her Nora has a passion for chocolates, not macaroons; her husband’s controlling ways prohibit this as well as smoking, one of her other secret habits. Her crime is more one of embezzlement than forgery, which resonates in these troubled financial times. Her home is a trophy house designed by her and Evan rather than an apartment as in the original. Her newly rediscovered friend Christine and her would-be blackmailer Fitzpatrick have no prior history together but begin an unexpected (and not wholly believable) relationship. There are numerous other changes, omissions and additions, but one gets the general idea that Rebeck has cleverly utilized the fundamental arc of Ibsen’s story while updating it to speak more to today’s audiences. Shortening the plot to two acts rather than three also makes some of the plot points a bit hurried (as when Christine suddenly, almost magically, manages to produce a flamenco recording for Nora to dance to). Finally, while it is interesting to compare this iteration to Ibsen’s original, it should and does stand on its own as a commentary on today’s societal prohibitions in America rather than on those of Norway in the late nineteenth century.
New Rep’s cast and crew have managed to pull this one off. The direction by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary and the acting of the entire cast are triumphantly successful in making this a work that can be judged on its own merits for its own times. Sarah Newhouse (Nora), Will Lyman (Evan) and Jennie Israel (Christine) are especially memorable. Gabriel Kuttner (Neil Fitzpatrick) and Diego Arciniegas (Damien) do their best with roles that are imperfectly written, the former with an unbelievable metamorphosis, the latter with desires more explicit than platonic and thus discomforting in a best friend of the family. Claudia Q. Nolan makes the most of her few scenes as nanny for the well-played children, Bob (Julian Schepis) and Julianna (Cheryl D. Singleton). In this version, though, Nora seems insufficiently detached from them, making her final leave-taking less credible. Given her more positive interaction with them earlier in the play, we might well expect this Nora to divorce Evan and take the children with her.
The costumes by Rafael Jaen, lighting by Chris Brusberg, and sound by Scott Nason (with music box interludes between scenes) are all equal to New Rep’s usual level of technical achievement, as is the scenic design by Kathryn Kawecki (if one overlooks a couple of posts that tend to obscure action at times, and the curious Norfolk pines growing outside in the snow).
And what of that other question, that unforgettable door slam at the final moment of Ibsen’s thunderous work? Both plays begin with Nora and end with her husband, each of them alone on stage. In Ibsen, it is profoundly effective, in that just before the sound of the door, Torvald has a moment of ephemeral hope that they might just patch things up with a fundamental change, a “miracle of miracles”. As he voices this hope, his back to the door, the sound of its slamming shut is one of theater’s great non-verbal moments. Rebeck’s version ends with less of a grand slam and more of a whimper, though the angst on Evan’s face is certainly a painful moment as created by Will Lyman. In the end, this is a satisfying and memorable deconstruction; it’s just not your grandmother’s dollhouse.
New Rep’s production of Theresa Rebeck’s “DollHouse”, described as a “drama based on Ibsen”, presents an audience with a couple of basic questions. At its final moment, will there be that iconic door slam heard round the world of theater? And since this is an adaptation rather than a translation, is it fair to compare it to the original? The answer to both these questions would be a resounding yes…and no.
Ibsen wrote his “A Doll House” in 1879, the sixth of what are generally accepted as his major plays. Many scholars consider it the birth of modern naturalistic drama. No less a pundit than George Bernard Shaw declared that “Nora’s revolt is the end of a chapter of human history”. It is generally considered a seminal feminist play, although it is much more than that. While Ibsen’s Nora gradually evolves from a self-described lark or squirrel to a more human being, it is at a price. Not only does she give up her home and family, but she dispenses with the parameters that society allowed. Yet she is by no means the only puppet manipulated by others’ expectations. Her husband (Torvald in the original, Evan here) is equally constrained by what he knows he must do and how he must comport himself. All of Ibsen’s characters are doll-like; they are human in form but far from free to express their human attributes.
Rebeck’s “DollHouse” takes place in a contemporary Connecticut suburb, just the first of many alterations to the Ibsen model. Her Nora has a passion for chocolates, not macaroons; her husband’s controlling ways prohibit this as well as smoking, one of her other secret habits. Her crime is more one of embezzlement than forgery, which resonates in these troubled financial times. Her home is a trophy house designed by her and Evan rather than an apartment as in the original. Her newly rediscovered friend Christine and her would-be blackmailer Fitzpatrick have no prior history together but begin an unexpected (and not wholly believable) relationship. There are numerous other changes, omissions and additions, but one gets the general idea that Rebeck has cleverly utilized the fundamental arc of Ibsen’s story while updating it to speak more to today’s audiences. Shortening the plot to two acts rather than three also makes some of the plot points a bit hurried (as when Christine suddenly, almost magically, manages to produce a flamenco recording for Nora to dance to). Finally, while it is interesting to compare this iteration to Ibsen’s original, it should and does stand on its own as a commentary on today’s societal prohibitions in America rather than on those of Norway in the late nineteenth century.
New Rep’s cast and crew have managed to pull this one off. The direction by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary and the acting of the entire cast are triumphantly successful in making this a work that can be judged on its own merits for its own times. Sarah Newhouse (Nora), Will Lyman (Evan) and Jennie Israel (Christine) are especially memorable. Gabriel Kuttner (Neil Fitzpatrick) and Diego Arciniegas (Damien) do their best with roles that are imperfectly written, the former with an unbelievable metamorphosis, the latter with desires more explicit than platonic and thus discomforting in a best friend of the family. Claudia Q. Nolan makes the most of her few scenes as nanny for the well-played children, Bob (Julian Schepis) and Julianna (Cheryl D. Singleton). In this version, though, Nora seems insufficiently detached from them, making her final leave-taking less credible. Given her more positive interaction with them earlier in the play, we might well expect this Nora to divorce Evan and take the children with her.
The costumes by Rafael Jaen, lighting by Chris Brusberg, and sound by Scott Nason (with music box interludes between scenes) are all equal to New Rep’s usual level of technical achievement, as is the scenic design by Kathryn Kawecki (if one overlooks a couple of posts that tend to obscure action at times, and the curious Norfolk pines growing outside in the snow).
And what of that other question, that unforgettable door slam at the final moment of Ibsen’s thunderous work? Both plays begin with Nora and end with her husband, each of them alone on stage. In Ibsen, it is profoundly effective, in that just before the sound of the door, Torvald has a moment of ephemeral hope that they might just patch things up with a fundamental change, a “miracle of miracles”. As he voices this hope, his back to the door, the sound of its slamming shut is one of theater’s great non-verbal moments. Rebeck’s version ends with less of a grand slam and more of a whimper, though the angst on Evan’s face is certainly a painful moment as created by Will Lyman. In the end, this is a satisfying and memorable deconstruction; it’s just not your grandmother’s dollhouse.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Review: DollHouse
We’re never so vulnerable as when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. – Walter Anderson
By Richard Martin
Nora has a secret.
Of course we all have secrets. Some we keep to ourselves and tell no one. Some we share with those closest to us, but conceal from everyone else. And some we’ll confide to a trusted friend, but carefully hide from a lover or a spouse. That’s the kind of secret that Nora has. But things have happened, and Nora is now standing on a slippery rock between the devil and the deep blue sea, which is beginning to get a bit rough.
In “DollHouse,” New Rep’s presentation of Theresa Rebeck’s modern day adaptation of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary, Nora is the wife of Evan, a once-again powerful banker, who had been sidelined for some time by a heart condition and a demoralizing lack of income. Now, on Christmas Eve, with Nora at his side, Evan is preparing to reenter the fray at a costume party hosted by the chairman of the bank where Evan is about to take charge.
Evan (Will Lyman) is still cautious about their own finances, but Nora (Sarah Newhouse, with just the right blend of intelligence and flightiness) feels finally able to exhale after such a long period of belt-tightening, as evidenced by the array of shopping bags she’s just set down in their stylish, suburban Connecticut home (a bright, elegant, expansive design by Kathryn Kawecki).
Her relief is short-lived, however, when she discovers that her secret is in jeopardy, and consequently her comfortable life. When her and Evan’s close friend Damien (Diego Arciniegas) mentions offhandedly that Evan had been phoned, seemingly out of the blue, by a Neil Fitzpatrick, Nora tries to hide her shock at hearing the name, but Damien notices. Life is suddenly becoming complicated.
Fitzpatrick, it turns out, was the accountant for her father’s business. And when Evan was ill and unemployed, Nora was able to obtain enough money to see them through by conspiring with Fitzpatrick to skim from the business. Evan thinks Nora’s father, who was dying at the time, gave her the money. Fitzpatrick got caught and went to prison. Nora didn’t, and took Evan to Italy for six months of rest, then came home to decorate the house.
Nora’s fears escalate when Fitzpatrick (Gabriel Kuttner) appears at the house, telling her that Evan has snubbed his request for a job, and threatening her with exposure unless she intercedes on his behalf. Nora says she needs time to think about all this, but Fitzpatrick is insistent. Nora’s holiday spirit is quickly turning into the ghost of Christmas past.
Now she doesn’t know where to turn. She’s afraid to tell Evan. She won’t tell Damien, for whom her feelings are quite conflicted; he’s in love with her, and has told her as much. She doesn’t want him to think less of her, nor does she want to compromise his friendship with Evan. But when an old high school friend, Christine, comes to visit and asks for help finding a job at Evan’s bank, Nora recalls that Christine was always good at keeping a secret, and she finally has someone to confide in. Although when she does, Christine succinctly responds, “…So you stole money?” Nora winces at the directness and replies, “It wasn’t stealing. It was embezzling.”
As much as we want to know what happens in the end – that’s how we know it’s a good story – the more interesting moments, I think, are earlier. What keeps Nora from telling Evan what happened? She clearly loves him very much. It’s why she did it. Her greatest fear, no doubt, is that he won’t return that love. So it’s when she puts her trust in the truth, in telling it to Evan, in exposing herself, that she takes her biggest risk.
In the end, of course, the truth will out. But in the long history of “A Doll’s House,” the question has always been, what truth will we hear, and what will Nora and her husband do with it. Some playwrights are far ahead of their time, and Ibsen is near the top of that category. So it’s not surprising that his perspectives were often unwelcome, not only among his contemporaries, but by later generations as well. Since the play was first published in 1879, dozens of producers, directors, and adapters have remolded the ending to suit their own, or what they perceive as their audiences’, sensibilities.
Ms. Rebeck’s “DollHouse” is faithful to Ibsen’s intent. Those who know the play will enjoy seeing how that is presented. Those who don’t know the play have even more to look forward to.
(With Claudia Q. Nolan, Julian Schepis, and Cheryl Singleton)
By Richard Martin
Nora has a secret.
Of course we all have secrets. Some we keep to ourselves and tell no one. Some we share with those closest to us, but conceal from everyone else. And some we’ll confide to a trusted friend, but carefully hide from a lover or a spouse. That’s the kind of secret that Nora has. But things have happened, and Nora is now standing on a slippery rock between the devil and the deep blue sea, which is beginning to get a bit rough.
In “DollHouse,” New Rep’s presentation of Theresa Rebeck’s modern day adaptation of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary, Nora is the wife of Evan, a once-again powerful banker, who had been sidelined for some time by a heart condition and a demoralizing lack of income. Now, on Christmas Eve, with Nora at his side, Evan is preparing to reenter the fray at a costume party hosted by the chairman of the bank where Evan is about to take charge.
Evan (Will Lyman) is still cautious about their own finances, but Nora (Sarah Newhouse, with just the right blend of intelligence and flightiness) feels finally able to exhale after such a long period of belt-tightening, as evidenced by the array of shopping bags she’s just set down in their stylish, suburban Connecticut home (a bright, elegant, expansive design by Kathryn Kawecki).
Her relief is short-lived, however, when she discovers that her secret is in jeopardy, and consequently her comfortable life. When her and Evan’s close friend Damien (Diego Arciniegas) mentions offhandedly that Evan had been phoned, seemingly out of the blue, by a Neil Fitzpatrick, Nora tries to hide her shock at hearing the name, but Damien notices. Life is suddenly becoming complicated.
Fitzpatrick, it turns out, was the accountant for her father’s business. And when Evan was ill and unemployed, Nora was able to obtain enough money to see them through by conspiring with Fitzpatrick to skim from the business. Evan thinks Nora’s father, who was dying at the time, gave her the money. Fitzpatrick got caught and went to prison. Nora didn’t, and took Evan to Italy for six months of rest, then came home to decorate the house.
Nora’s fears escalate when Fitzpatrick (Gabriel Kuttner) appears at the house, telling her that Evan has snubbed his request for a job, and threatening her with exposure unless she intercedes on his behalf. Nora says she needs time to think about all this, but Fitzpatrick is insistent. Nora’s holiday spirit is quickly turning into the ghost of Christmas past.
Now she doesn’t know where to turn. She’s afraid to tell Evan. She won’t tell Damien, for whom her feelings are quite conflicted; he’s in love with her, and has told her as much. She doesn’t want him to think less of her, nor does she want to compromise his friendship with Evan. But when an old high school friend, Christine, comes to visit and asks for help finding a job at Evan’s bank, Nora recalls that Christine was always good at keeping a secret, and she finally has someone to confide in. Although when she does, Christine succinctly responds, “…So you stole money?” Nora winces at the directness and replies, “It wasn’t stealing. It was embezzling.”
As much as we want to know what happens in the end – that’s how we know it’s a good story – the more interesting moments, I think, are earlier. What keeps Nora from telling Evan what happened? She clearly loves him very much. It’s why she did it. Her greatest fear, no doubt, is that he won’t return that love. So it’s when she puts her trust in the truth, in telling it to Evan, in exposing herself, that she takes her biggest risk.
In the end, of course, the truth will out. But in the long history of “A Doll’s House,” the question has always been, what truth will we hear, and what will Nora and her husband do with it. Some playwrights are far ahead of their time, and Ibsen is near the top of that category. So it’s not surprising that his perspectives were often unwelcome, not only among his contemporaries, but by later generations as well. Since the play was first published in 1879, dozens of producers, directors, and adapters have remolded the ending to suit their own, or what they perceive as their audiences’, sensibilities.
Ms. Rebeck’s “DollHouse” is faithful to Ibsen’s intent. Those who know the play will enjoy seeing how that is presented. Those who don’t know the play have even more to look forward to.
(With Claudia Q. Nolan, Julian Schepis, and Cheryl Singleton)
“DollHouse”: Nora Finds New Life as a Modern Woman
"DollHouse," Theresa Rebeck's adaptation of Ibsen's classic play, "A Doll's House," is a well-crafted and meaningful re-imagining. As presented at New Rep, it is a sharply acted and clearly presented piece of theater. Beyond that, "DollHouse" is something greater: it is relevant, and its relevance is somewhat of a shock.
Aside from time and place, Rebeck hasn't made the differences from the original play terribly stark. In many ways, she has hardly re-written the Torvald character (here called Evan, and played brilliantly by Will Lyman) at all. Evan's life is a performance, and his wife is his prized posession. He starts and ends the play firmly unable to see her as anything other than decoration: living and breathing proof of his sucess and masculinity. And, like Ibsen's heroine, Rebeck's Nora (Sarah Newhouse) is at first able to delude herself enough to play that role (her opening line is "I am happy"). As the plot thickens, though, that delusion cannot be maintained.
All of the elements that made the original so powerful are in place: Nora is coveted by Evan's best friend, Damien (Diego Arciniegas), and has a terrible, money-related secret that threatens to ruin everything her husband has worked for. (Neil, the man who seeks to blackmail her, is played with understated grace by Gabriel Kuttner.) With the help of her old high school friend (Jennie Israel), she tries to keep that situation at bay while literally putting on a show - at one point, she does a suggestive dance right there in the living room - to keep the pretend perfection afloat. She is, as the title suggets, a plaything for Evan and Damien, living in a perfect house that Evan, as he often mentions, built for her.
Reviewers have criticized this adaptation for leaving the character of Evan mired in Victorian-era sensibilities, while bringing the rest of the cast to the modern day. While there is some weight to this argument, I felt, alarmingly, that the fundamental essense of Evan still rings true. And Trebeck does give Evan some modern touches. At one point, for example, he acknowledges to Nora that he enjoys having a wife his best friend covets, and apologizes for the situation this has put her in (though he makes no moves to change it).
Nora's transformation, when it happens, does seem sudden, and that is one of the play's few flaws. We see her hopes and expectations shatter in an instant, but not enough groundwork has been laid to make her subsequent actions seem entirely in line with the character.
Still, this is a minor quibble with a piece that is simply good, all around. Director Bridget O'Leary has a clear vision, which her actors execute brilliantly, and Kathryn Kawecki's set is an ideal space for the action. With the choice of this play, New Rep has raised feminist issues that are important and often overlooked at this particular cultural moment. When Nora makes her final stand, she represents the modern woman who is still struggling to be viewed as a complete, complicated human being, and her triumph is something to be relished.
by Jana Pollack, New Rep Reviewer
Aside from time and place, Rebeck hasn't made the differences from the original play terribly stark. In many ways, she has hardly re-written the Torvald character (here called Evan, and played brilliantly by Will Lyman) at all. Evan's life is a performance, and his wife is his prized posession. He starts and ends the play firmly unable to see her as anything other than decoration: living and breathing proof of his sucess and masculinity. And, like Ibsen's heroine, Rebeck's Nora (Sarah Newhouse) is at first able to delude herself enough to play that role (her opening line is "I am happy"). As the plot thickens, though, that delusion cannot be maintained.
All of the elements that made the original so powerful are in place: Nora is coveted by Evan's best friend, Damien (Diego Arciniegas), and has a terrible, money-related secret that threatens to ruin everything her husband has worked for. (Neil, the man who seeks to blackmail her, is played with understated grace by Gabriel Kuttner.) With the help of her old high school friend (Jennie Israel), she tries to keep that situation at bay while literally putting on a show - at one point, she does a suggestive dance right there in the living room - to keep the pretend perfection afloat. She is, as the title suggets, a plaything for Evan and Damien, living in a perfect house that Evan, as he often mentions, built for her.
Reviewers have criticized this adaptation for leaving the character of Evan mired in Victorian-era sensibilities, while bringing the rest of the cast to the modern day. While there is some weight to this argument, I felt, alarmingly, that the fundamental essense of Evan still rings true. And Trebeck does give Evan some modern touches. At one point, for example, he acknowledges to Nora that he enjoys having a wife his best friend covets, and apologizes for the situation this has put her in (though he makes no moves to change it).
Nora's transformation, when it happens, does seem sudden, and that is one of the play's few flaws. We see her hopes and expectations shatter in an instant, but not enough groundwork has been laid to make her subsequent actions seem entirely in line with the character.
Still, this is a minor quibble with a piece that is simply good, all around. Director Bridget O'Leary has a clear vision, which her actors execute brilliantly, and Kathryn Kawecki's set is an ideal space for the action. With the choice of this play, New Rep has raised feminist issues that are important and often overlooked at this particular cultural moment. When Nora makes her final stand, she represents the modern woman who is still struggling to be viewed as a complete, complicated human being, and her triumph is something to be relished.
by Jana Pollack, New Rep Reviewer
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Welcome to the DollHouse
DollHouse is Teresa Rebeck’s updated version of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. I will admit that while I have probably read the Ibsen play, I do not remember many of the details and will not try to compare the two. We meet Nora, a woman returning to her beautiful house after a day of Christmas shopping at high end stores. Her husband, Evan is about to start a new high-power job running a bank. He recently suffered a heart attack and having had a second chance, he likes to inform others of the dangers of sugar. While Evan was sick, the couple ran out of money, and Nora gets help from Neil to embezzle money to help them maintain their lifestyle without Evan’s knowledge. Nora learns from family friend Damien, (who by the way, has a thing for Nora and is dying), that Neil has been released after serving 18 months and has gone to Evan looking for a job. Evan and Nora have understandably different reactions to this and it is not until the end of the play that Evan discovers what Nora did. In addition (this is a busy Christmas), Nora’s childhood friend, Christine shows up looking for a job after having fallen on hard times herself. All these factors collide early Christmas morning while the children are upstairs sleeping and the couple is faced to deal with what happened.
I found myself fascinated with the whole second act wanting to know how it would end. I did, however, find myself disappointed with the way the play ends. Director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary does a great job at directing a talented cast. She keeps the show tight and the audience engaged. Sarah Newhouse plays an interesting Nora coming across at times as confident and smart, and other times naïve. Will Lyman portrays Evan as your typical businessman, a husband who doesn’t fully get his wife and is great in the final scenes of the play. Kathryn Kawceki does an amazing job designing the interior of a beautiful house. Something I noticed a few times were the support columns, which divide up the set and are sometimes in the way of seeing the actors – at first this was a distraction but then I wondered if it might have been symbolic. Overall, this is a well-directed solid production of an updated classic.
Frank Furnari, New Rep Reviewer
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