Defining moment in Ibsen classic ‘A Doll’s House’ echoes in Crescent City Stages production

What’s the statute of limitations on spoilers? Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play “A Doll’s House” is still making waves nearly 150 years later, and its final scene remains an iconic moment in theater history. But it would be a shame to ruin the ending for first-time audiences, so be warned: Spoilers ahead.

OK, now about that “door slam heard around the world.” At the beginning, “A Doll’s House” exhibits some of the usual trappings of Victorian-era domestic drama, but the play takes a hard turn when Nora decides she’ll no longer accept her husband’s overbearing patriarchal behavior and makes a dramatic exit. The ending caused quite a stir back in the day, as Ibsen pivoted from mannerly romanticism in favor of bleaker truths.

A new adaptation of “A Doll’s House” from playwright Amy Herzog gets even leaner and meaner. Premiering on Broadway last year, Herzog trimmed the play from three hours to two, tightened up the plot lines and amplified the drama of Nora’s barely contained secrets.

And the set for that Broadway production was stripped down, too—a bare stage with a few chairs set against a pitch-black backdrop. If Ibsen’s play shifted from romanticism to realism, the new production pushed “A Doll’s House” into even darker modern realms.

A tense, bare-bones staging

Inspired by that production, Crescent City Stages presents the regional premiere of Herzog’s adaption of “A Doll’s House” directed by Jana Mestecky, at Loyola University’s Marquette Theatre. The company turns in a tense, bare bones treatise on love and marriage that runs hot and cold, ultimately delivering on the play’s grand finale.

Before the door slams, “A Doll’s House” revolves around Nora’s indiscretion. Years prior, with her husband Torvald in poor health, Nora went to a loan shark for a chunk of cash. Because she needed a man to co-sign, and because she didn’t want her husband to know about the loan, Nora illegally forged her dead father’s signature.

Now fully recovered, Torvald works at a bank with Nora’s unscrupulous lender who threatens to spill the beans and upend her happy household if she doesn’t convince her husband to give him a promotion.

The set design (by Michael A. Newcomer) is stark and minimalist, a black stage with the couple’s house merely suggested by a bare wood framework. The effect is unsettling, as the finely appointed home of the privileged-class family is represented as dark and empty.

Costumes are vaguely period-appropriate and don’t change, even when characters supposedly do, and the children of the house appear only as creepy disembodied voices. Props—like a box of cookies or a fine cigar—are mimed by the actors on an empty stage scattered with a handful of uncomfortable hard-backed chairs.

Ominous atmosphere

While Ibsen waits until the play’s final act to pull the rug out from under audiences, this modern production doesn’t bother with a rug at all. The result is akin to a psychological thriller, as the unadorned play lasers in on Nora’s smoldering debt, the malicious act of blackmail and her mounting fear of being found out.

The ominous atmosphere is punctuated with well-timed flashes of cool light and a mechanical sound design that whirs and clangs (Zak Lanius, Amara Skinner).

The dark tone undermines any sense of intimacy, favoring dread and foreboding instead, and the performances follow suit. As Nora, Elizabeth Newcomer often affects an air of naive detachment, not unlike a Stepford wife or one of Margaret Atwood’s handmaids.

Her real-life husband, Michael A. Newcomer, plays Torvald mostly as a self-righteous and condescending mansplainer. Rather than chemistry, the couple emanates a Darwinian kind of survival.

The slamming door

The strong cast also includes Doug Spearman as menacing loan shark Krogstad and Sue Jin Song as hardened widow Kristine, a foil for Nora’s relative privilege. Furthering the sense of dreary drudgery are Douglas Scott Streater as the sick and depressed Dr. Rank and Rachel Whitman Groves as Anne-Marie, the once destitute nanny who gave up her own child to care for Nora’s.

In New York, the reimagined production of “A Doll’s House” divided audiences, and this production is likely to do the same.

The moody and modern portrayal of marital ties that bind is sure to resonate with some contemporary audiences, though others might be put off by the cold, stark staging of Ibsen’s domestic drama.

Regardless, that famous final scene still brings the heat, as Nora’s door slam is a gesture that echoes across centuries of feminist struggle and reverberates still today despite, in the case of this production, the lack of an actual door to slam.

Brad Rhines writes about theater. Email him at bradfordrhines@gmail.com.

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‘A DOLL’S HOUSE’

WHEN: Through Sept. 22

WHERE: Marquette Theatre

Loyola University New Orleans

6365 St. Charles Ave., New Orleans

TICKETS: $10-$58.90

INFO: crescentcitystage.com

Join a panel of female theater artists Sept. 15 after the 2:30 p.m. matinee for a Women & Theatre Talkback.