"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
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