Smart Comedy from Virginia Rep Examines Marriage, Motherhood, and the Modern Woman

Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, A Doll’s House (premiering in 1879), was not at all unfamiliar to me as it is a staple in collegiate theatre history courses. In it, Ibsen turns a lens on the complications of domestic life from the point of view of Nora Helmer, who is at once a pampered wife, and a bird stuck in a gilded cage. At the end of the play, Nora walks out the door leaving behind her husband, Torvald, the children, and nanny, Ann Marie, in what became known as the door slam heard around the world. Ibsen noted it as a modern tragedy, making the statement that “a woman cannot be herself in modern society.”

Fast forward to Lucas Hnath’s 2017 sequel where the playwright has the storyline picking up fifteen years after the original. The play begins with a knock and Nora (played Katrinah Carol Lewis) returning to a house that has been scrubbed of her presence. The set designed by Katherine Field makes this plain as we encounter a seemingly sanitized parlor room with two chairs and gray marbled walls that are conspicuously bare. The forced perspective accomplished with two walls forcing the focal point to a single door upstage is an immediate cue that this sequel will begin exactly where the first play ended.

When Nora arrives, having had no contact with her family since her departure, what unfolds is a brilliant exchange with Ann Marie whose irreverence and loose tongue lets loose all that the household members have been thinking and talking about in her absence. No one knows what Nora has been up to and the assumptions aren’t pretty as Ann Marie sharply points out with searing dialogue, sharply and playfully delivered by Catherine Shafner. 

We learn that Nora thought it best not to interfere with and make contact with her family so as not to disrupt the healing process from the wounds she’s made. To that end, Nora hasn’t returned to reconcile with her family, not necessarily. She has found herself in a bind that can only be rectified by the husband she abandoned.

A Doll’s House, Part 2  raises some poignant questions for audience members about modern womanhood that many married mothers in particular may empathize with. What are the expectations and restrictions placed on mothers and wives, what is sacrificed, what might life look like instead for a woman who has put herself and desires first and does “all the things that married women aren’t allowed to do,” instead of giving over to a crippling responsibility? 

In contrast, we are also given the opportunity to ponder the ramifications for those who were left behind. Torvald (David Bridgewater) and their daughter, Emmy (Katy Feldhahn), are each given time alone with Nora to reveal their wounds and challenge the audience’s perceptions of what makes for domestic tranquility. Emmy in particular is striking as a precocious wise teenager who doesn’t appear to have been affected by the estrangement of her mother in the ways one might expect.

Sharon Ott’s direction has these actors sparring with lively agility on stage. It was fascinating to watch Katrinah Carol Lewis, who is reprising the role of Nora after TheatreLab’s 2018 production of A Doll’s House, vacillate between the poise and grace of a refined lady and the relaxed posture and speech of a woman of the world when irreverence struck. Audiences may also be struck by the modern music playing as the pre-show to foreshadow the modern language of the dialogue. 

Recommended for fourteen an up, this well-acted comedy (definitely compared to the original) runs about an hour and a half and is performed without an intermission. If you’re in the mood for a smartly written and acted comedy, you don’t need to have seen the original to enjoy this production. 

A Doll’s House, Part 2 plays at Virginia Rep’s November Theatre until Sunday, February 27. For showtimes and tickets, go here.

Feature photo by Aaron Sutten: Katrinah Carol Lewis, Catherine Schaffner, David Bridgewater, and Katy Feldhahn. [Photo by Aaron Sutten]

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