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)