When Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" was first performed in 1879, it arrived with a thundercrack. Its heroine, Nora Helmer, frustrated by a lack of self-fulfillment, flees the "doll's house" of her marriage, leaving behind a husband and three children. So controversial was the drama then that Europe's most famous actress at the time, Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, refused to play Nora, and "A Doll's House" was sometimes performed with an alternate ending.
Ibsen himself maintained that he did not set out to write a feminist play, but it hardly matters. "A Doll's House" is now considered a paragon of feminist literature, and was a special inspiration to women in the 1960s and '70s who began to reconsider the institution of marriage.
"A Doll's House, Part 2," running until Sunday at the Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue, picks up the story in 1894, as Nora returns 15 years after leaving the Helmer house. Her homecoming, however, is not to reconcile with her husband, Torvald (who has never remarried). Instead she wants a legal divorce, which her husband has never sought after all these years, and for which, according to 19th-century law, she has no legal avenue to pursue.
Although Lucas Hnath's 2017 play is set at the turn of the last century (the costumes and staging -- a spare and fading Victorian home -- are in keeping with the period), we are by no means in 19th-century Europe. This is a play slightly out of time, as both the dialogue and the characters' sensibilities are thoroughly modern. (Including, as temperatures rise, the slinging of a number of four-letter words.)
As with Ibsen's play, the drama's centerpiece is Nora Helmer, and the actress Rosemary Cline is up to the task. Though "A Doll's House, Part 2" is disguised as a period piece, the subtext of the drama is the exploration of the modern feminist era through Nora, one of its earliest practitioners. Both the playwright and Ms. Cline dare to portray Nora as essentially unlikable. Yes, she is brave, but also imperious; highly intelligent but self-satisfied. And Ms. Cline's subtle performance nails these dichotomies beautifully.
Upon her return, her first encounter is with the family nanny, Anne Marie (played by Marianne Schmidt), who has raised Nora's three children herself. Nora has become a famous, and prosperous, feminist writer, and Ms. Cline carries herself with her chin high and a patronizing tone that is both irritating and utterly perfect. Her gait is a kind of fluid strut, and she speaks to Anne Marie as if she were a child rather than the woman who has raised three children who would have been otherwise motherless.
If it sounds like the playwright is somewhat suspicious of Nora's self-actualization, you may well be right. Soon Torvald arrives home, stunned to see Nora sitting in his living room. Andrew Botsford, so adept at playing the cad in previous HTC productions, stretches here to deliver a highly empathetic character. With great pathos, Mr. Botsford portrays Torvald as a man genuinely confounded by his headstrong wife, and his barely hidden feelings of continuing love for her are movingly conveyed.
As they discuss divorce, Nora and Torvald begin to rehash their marriage, trading barbs and recriminations. Ultimately, however, Torvald is no match for his wife, who is clearly his intellectual superior. It is not until the arrival of their daughter, Emmy, that Nora finally meets her match.
Emmy (played by a calmly fierce Molly Brennan) is about to be married, which of course disappoints her mother. As their debate heats up, Ms. Brennan does well showing us Emmy's own moxie, and Nora finds herself literally backed up against a wall as Emmy summons a spirited defense of institutional marriage.
Who's right? This is of course a question for the viewer to decide, though we feel the playwright's sensibilities leaning toward Emmy's more balanced vision of a flawed but perhaps indelible institution. As she walks out the door for a second time at the end of "A Doll's House, Part 2," Nora confidently asserts that marriage will soon end forever, hopefully in her lifetime.
With the advantage of foresight, it seems to the audience yet one more miscalculation of this potent but often myopic character.
There are some genuine laughs in "A Doll's House, Part 2," but they are mostly of the uneasy sort. This is a drama that sets out to take a hard look at what the feminist era has wrought, both good and bad. Taking notice of the audience during this performance, dominated by older couples, I could imagine that there were some interesting conversations on the car rides home.
One hopes so. It's a play that deserves to be seen and then debated, and this satisfying, rigorously acted production does it justice.
