PHOTO CREDIT: Liz Lauren
Henrik Ibsen’s spectacles probably steamed up while he wrote A Doll’s House, but his brain surely boiled as well. One of classic theater’s sexiest plays also provided American Players Theatre’s audience witness to one of the world’s greatest dramas, which was published in 78 languages and inspired countless performances and adaptations.
It’s a woman’s personal odyssey, somewhat comparable to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. But Hawthorne was a prude compared to this Scandinavian and lacked Ibsen’s genius for dramatic, even explosive story craft. Yet, there’s nary a gun nor blade visible. Psychological suspense intensifies. A Doll’s House opens with grabby bourgeois husband, Torvald, treating his young wife Nora like a doll, or “my little hamster.” Initially, nothing but “gold-digger” shines in Nora’s slightly manic eyes. Swift plot turns bring a man to her doorstep with a secret, held over her like the sword of Damocles, and an old girlfriend who may help her survive.
She endures dark nights of the soul, and actor Kelsey Brennan dominates the stage with her radiance and increasingly tortured being. Her closing-scene transformation is breathtaking, but it feels inevitable—as does the shattering demise of Nate Burger’s Torvald. Nora must finally dance a gypsy tarantella for her fantasizing husband. But she pirouettes along a cliff and, somewhere between salvation and damnation, lies her humanity, a quivering lifeline in the “#MeToo” era.
Through Oct. 6, in APT’s Touchstone Theater. For tickets, visit americanplayers.org.
