A Doll's House at Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
- Title: A Doll’s House
- Written by: Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Amy Herzog
- Director: Brendan Healy
- Actors: Hailey Gillis, Laura Condlln, Gray Powell, David Collins, Jamie Robinson, Elizabeth Saunders, Athan Giazitzidis, Vera Deodato
- Company: Canadian Stage
- Venue: Bluma Appel Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs to Feb. 1
Critic’s Pick
A little over halfway through A Doll’s House, titular doll Nora spins around her living room in a gossamer, cherry-red dress. The layers of tulle fan around her like flower petals as a small audience – Torvald, her husband, and Dr. Rank, a family friend – looks on, clapping along to the beat of an unheard dance.
In a happier world, the scene would be a moment of released inhibitions, a snapshot of the intimate contentment that can only be found in a young married couple’s living room after supper.
But in Canadian Stage’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s quintessential drama, Nora’s manic twirling – a rehearsal for an upcoming costume party – is a warning. It’s a sign that Nora has lifted the drawbridge between her most rational and anxious selves, and it’s the point of no return for a marriage that was never a union between equal partners, not really.
Director Brendan Healy’s incisive staging doesn’t try to rewrite A Doll’s House. As ever, the play follows restless housewife Nora as she attempts to cover her tracks from a small lie, which, of course, snowballs into a life-altering marital dispute by the end of the show’s two-hour runtime.
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Instead, Healy drills into how the play feels – the way sweet cookies crunch between Nora’s teeth, and the way puffy snowflakes accumulate on the windowsill of Torvald’s gloomy home. Healy’s Doll House, more or less set in the place and time prescribed by Ibsen, isn’t a mere snapshot of 19th-century respectability politics – it’s an opportunity for audiences to feel Nora’s blood pressure rise in real time, and to empathize with her urge to claw her way out of the house no matter the cost. It’s immersive in every sense of the word.
Much of that immersion comes from the production’s bold scenography, from Gillian Gallow’s velveteen, gold-framed set and elegant costumes to Deanna H. Choi’s claustrophobic sound designs, which amplify everything from the food in Nora’s mouth to the whispers spat between characters in secrecy.
In the large Bluma Appel Theatre, Healy’s visuals are neither too subtle nor too overplayed – the size of the production and that of the space match in a way that makes the work feel luxurious, even exquisite. I can’t recall the last time I didn’t wish a production in the Bluma had instead been staged in Canadian Stage’s cozier Berkeley Street Theatre – A Doll’s House’s clever framing mimics the intimacy of the smaller space, but with all the grandeur and pomp such an existential story of class demands.
But it wouldn’t be A Doll’s House without a Nora to lead the charge – and a Torvald to suppress her, and a Kristine to console her. Indeed, Healy’s cast is just this side of epic.
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Hailey Gillis is a small miracle in the role of Nora – she taps into the part’s humour and levity without broadcasting the decidedly less cheerful emotions brewing just beneath Nora’s skin. When she dances, it’s without restraint, and when she giggles, the laughter fills the whole theatre – her pinched murmurs of worry and doubt are no less authentic, even when Amy Herzog’s adaptation sags in the play’s final beats.
Gray Powell’s Torvald, meanwhile, is tough to watch in the best ways – the character is controlling, fastidious and cruel without much by way of mitigating warmth. Much like Gillis, Powell finds unexpected moments of humour in a play which, as written, is famously unfunny – it’s a testament to his performance that Torvald doesn’t come off as even more of a scoundrel than he already is on the page.
As Nora’s friend Kristine, veteran Laura Condlln is understated and witty, in fabulous contrast to the actor’s recent marathon as Miss Hannigan in the Stratford Festival’s Annie. Condlln infuses the side character with depth and stakes not necessarily afforded by Herzog’s script; the same is true of Jamie Robinson as Krogstad, the aching loan shark at the centre of Nora and Torvald’s imminent demise, and of David Collins as Dr. Rank.
The rub – if there’s one to be found – is in Herzog’s script, which, particularly in its third act, succumbs to melodrama. A didactic final monologue, in which Nora explains to her husband what comes next for her, achieves a similar effect to America Ferrera’s third-wave-feminism speech in Barbie – it’s a little long and a little cloying, and even anachronistic in its insertion of 21st-century self-help jargon into an otherwise zippy, and plenty serviceable, adaptation of Ibsen’s masterwork.
In the end, though, the quality of Healy’s cast and production easily outweigh the quirks in Herzog’s script, resulting in a Doll’s House that’s blissfully unconcerned with what happens next for Nora. We don’t see her open that fabled door, nor is there any sense of what fate awaits Nora when she steps into the waiting snow. All we know in those last moments is that Nora has finally escaped. Whether her destination is a new town, a kinder husband or a final resting place is ultimately – tragically, maddeningly, beautifully – up to you.