{"id":10863,"date":"2019-08-22T16:19:47","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T16:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=10863"},"modified":"2019-08-22T16:21:33","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T16:21:33","slug":"ibsens-a-dolls-house-remains-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-dramas-steamy-and-relevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=10863","title":{"rendered":"Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” remains one of the world’s greatest dramas, steamy and relevant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Power dynamics between husband Torvald (Nate Burger) and Nora Helmer (Kelsey Brennan) shift precipitously through APT’s “A Doll’s House,” running through Oct. 4. Photos by Liz Lauren courtesy APT<\/em><\/p>\n

SPRING GREEN — Henrik Ibsen’s spectacles probably steamed up while\u00a0he wrote “A Doll’s House,” but his brain surely boiled\u00a0as well. One of classic theater\u2019s sexiest plays also provided American Players Theatre’s audience witness to one of the world’s greatest dramas\u00a0—\u00a0published in 1879 but now in 78 languages,\u00a0inspiring\u00a0countless performances and adaptations.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0a woman’s personal odyssey, proto-feminist, and somewhat\u00a0comparable\u00a0to\u00a0Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter<\/em>. But Hawthorne\u2019s\u00a0a Puritan prude compared to this Scandinavian and lacked Ibsen’s genius for dramatic, even explosive, story craft.\u00a0Yet there’s nary a gun nor blade visible.\u00a0Psychological suspense intensifies,\u00a0as if the well-stoked stove upstage is steadily swallowing the set in flames.<\/p>\n

It opens with grabby, bourgeois husband Torvald treating his young wife like a doll, or “my little hamster.” Initially, nothing\u00a0but \u201cgold-digger\u201d\u00a0shines\u00a0in Nora Helmer\u2019s\u00a0slightly manic eyes. Swift plots turns bring a man\u00a0to her doorstep with a secret, held over her like the\u00a0sword of Damocles, and\u00a0an old girlfriend who may help her survive.<\/p>\n

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A visitor (Juan Rivera Lebron) arrives with information that could shatter the delicate structure of Nora Helmer’s\u00a0 “Doll’s House.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Old \u201cfamily friend\u201d\u00a0Dr. Rank (Marcus Truschinski,* with dancing eyebrows and humid spectacles) lurks, secretly craving\u00a0vivacious Nora.<\/p>\n

\"\"A box of chocolates are only part of Nora’s wiles with well-off and frequent family guest Dr. Rank (Marcus Truschinski)<\/em><\/p>\n

Along the way, Ibsen deposits plenty of pregnant symbols: a Christmas doll’s house — “It’ll just break anyway,” Nora says with unwitting portent, — a white dress, then a red one (perhaps in homage to The Scarlet Letter<\/em>), a box of “forbidden” chocolates, a game of hide-and-seek, important letters stuck in a mailbox, a post card with a black cross…<\/p>\n

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Nora endures dark nights of the soul, and actor Kelsey Brennan dominates the stage with her radiance and increasingly tortured being. Her\u00a0closing-scene transformation\u00a0is breathtaking, but feels inevitable, as does the shattering demise of Nate Burger’s Torvald. Nora must\u00a0finally dance a\u00a0gypsy\u00a0tarantelle for her fantasizing husband. But she pirouettes along a cliff and,\u00a0somewhere between salvation and damnation,\u00a0lies her humanity, a quivering lifeline in the “#Me Too”\u00a0era.<\/p>\n

Through October 4, in APT\u2019s Touchstone Theater, For tickets, visit americanplayers.org.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

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* Marcus Truschinski is also playing the title character in Macbeth,<\/em> perhaps the plum role of APT’s season this year.<\/p>\n

A slightly shorter version of this review was published in Shepherd Express<\/em>:\u00a0https:\/\/shepherdexpress.com\/arts-and-entertainment\/theater\/a-dolls-house-still-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-dramas\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Power dynamics between husband Torvald (Nate Burger) and Nora Helmer (Kelsey Brennan) shift precipitously through APT’s “A Doll’s House,” running through Oct. 4. Photos by Liz Lauren courtesy APT SPRING GREEN — Henrik Ibsen’s spectacles probably steamed up while\u00a0he wrote … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[390,36,389,391,393,392],"class_list":["post-10863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com","tag-a-dolls-house-nora-helmer","tag-american-players-theatre","tag-henrik-ibsen","tag-kelsey-brennan","tag-marcus-truschinski","tag-nate-burger"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-2Pd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10863"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10889,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10863\/revisions\/10889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}