A DOLL'S LIFE to return to NYC- Page 2

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 5:04am

Just so you don't think I would ignore you, iluvtheatertrash, I never got the PM you sent.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 9/15/11 at 5:11pm

Would you mind PMing me an e-mail address? I've tried sending you a PM a few times now... Not sure why it's not going through.

And Wayman -- if you see this -- thank you for starting the All That Chat conversation. I've applied for a membership so I can join in and am waiting for verification.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/15/11 at 6:19pm

Done.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/15/11 at 10:49pm

Very interesting post, Gaveston, however....

"But if you are going to musicalize late 19th century Realism, why would you turn to Comden and Green to do it?"
Of course, we think of C&G as very much in step with their epoch and tend to think of them in an upbeat mode.

But based on the depth of character, emotion and irony in the lyrics and structure of many C&G songs - "Being Good Isn't Good Enough," "Lucky to Be Me," "Some Other Time," "Long Before I Knew You," "I Wanted to Change Him," "My Own Morning" (Georgina's longing for independence, almost a companion piece to Nora's facing her future in the only song I know from "A Doll's Life," the lovely "Learn to be Lonely" - Sally Mayes wisely put them together on her fine C&G c.d., "Our Private World") "Talking to Yourself," "Never Never Land," "The Party's Over," "Lonely Town," "Little Bit in Love," "Look Around," "My Unknown Someone," "When the Weather's Better," C&G might have been the very people to have turned to for the job. I'm not so sure Ibsen would have approved of any Broadway style musical sequel to "A Doll's House," but I can't see him as having any special objection to Comden and Green.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/16/11 at 5:50am

Henrik, I love Comden and Green and I've damn near worn out my copy of Sally Mayes' "Our Private World." But throughout their illustrious careers, C&G specialized in "contemporary" language, including slang and modern humor. Yeah, on occasion they'd reach back to the 20s or 30s, but they still wrote librettos set mostly within their own lifetimes.

PETER PAN was an exception in terms of time period, but it's also an exception in just about every other way.

To me it isn't a question of their being unable to write moving, serious material, but that they always seemed most inspired by the jargon of the 20th century. They just aren't people I'd turn to to figure out how to musicalize Ibsen. (Not that I'd musicalize Ibsen in the first place, but you get my point.)

I think Sondheim and Prince had had their split and I guess Hugh Wheeler was busy with THE LITTLE PRINCE.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/16/11 at 10:15am

gotcha, Gav.... do you know if Harnick, who seems a more natural - perhaps obvious - period fit, was considered or approached?

I don't know the show at all, but am fascinated by the idea. I love A Doll's House and Mayes' recording of "Learn to be Lonely," although I'm not sure how well the song suggests Nora's character, or when it comes in the show, it is certainly, a fine and haunting melody and lovely lyric. Certainly, the question of what happens to Nora and if "the most wonderful thing in the world" still could possibly happen is worth considering. But should it be left to our imaginations? The beautiful ambiguity of the end of this great play - is it almost sacrilege to go there? Perhaps a concept-approach, of several people imagining it, maybe theater people, might have proved interesting, although of limited appeal.

Don't get me wrong, iluv. I applaud the effort and wish I had more to offer you on the subject than my limited familiarity affords! I would only guess that Nora's ebullience and worldly-unwiseness would make interesting material for musical theater heroine material.

Also, if you haven't seen the last Broadway revival and are interested in investing some time, it is well worth looking into some footage. McTeer and Maxwell's performances were unforgettable. Of course, depending on how you feel, you may want to steer away from "models" at this point.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 9/16/11 at 1:25pm

Well, I am trying to steer clear as much as possible because I'd like to rehearse the original play "A Doll's House" with my actors before we even start on the musical. I would rather them create their own personal history of the role than study someone else's.

Thanks for all your kind wishes, everyone. I sure hope you get out to see it!

Here's a teaser trailer for the two productions that we released today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiDR5h_ZFe8&feature=colike

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/16/11 at 7:12pm

Henrik, I don't know if any other writers were considered for A DOLL'S LIFE. I do know that Prince and Comden & Green were trying very hard to work together and they went on to some show about baseball after ADL. C&G had another show in mind that Prince promised to produce later, but I believe his office went under before that project came off. I think there was genuine admiration and mutual respect between the three, but I don't think the pairing was as natural as Prince + Sondheim.

As you know, Prince had to resurrect his career later by teaming with ALW.

To me, one of the great problems is that Ibsen actually makes it pretty clear what happens to Nora after she slams the door: that's the function Mrs. Linde serves (in addition to being Nora's sounding-board so that we can hear all the exposition). And it doesn't involve "power." By and large, middle-class women simply didn't have any in 1870s Norway.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 9/16/11 at 7:40pm

This show has always fascinated me. Wasn't the York production not just smaller, but extensively revised? Is only the original available for performance?

"iluvtheatertrash, it is very telling that it took you several readings to find the humor in the libretto. Because that's what the show wants to be: a musical comedy set in 19th century Scandinavia. Not even Scandinavians find themselves amusing. "

I suppose A Little Night Music doesn't count?

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 9/16/11 at 8:57pm

Nope! We're actually going to be working with a little bit of a mixture of the original and a little bit of the York revisions. But the York revisions are the ones being licensed. I've been in touch with Larry, though, about restoring "Can You Hear Me Now?"

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/16/11 at 9:53pm

"I suppose A Little Night Music doesn't count?"

When ya got me, ya got me. Touche.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 10:43pm

"To me, one of the great problems is that Ibsen actually makes it pretty clear what happens to Nora after she slams the door: that's the function Mrs. Linde serves (in addition to being Nora's sounding-board so that we can hear all the exposition). And it doesn't involve "power." By and large, middle-class women simply didn't have any in 1870s Norway."

And yet, Gaveston, Kristine, after all her difficulties in widowhood and struggling to survive, reunites with Krogstad, his finding her again vanquishes his grief, anger and pettiness, and there is a sense that they just might be happy together. And by so doing, Kristine serves not only to advance a major plot point - by resolving the surface conflict so that the deeper issues between Torvald and Nora are uncovered - but also shows that there may be second chances in life, even for women as hard on their luck as Kristine has been and as Nora will be.

Kristine and Nora are not the same and have so far been on very different trajectories so there is no way of projecting Kristine's resolution onto Nora's future.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 10:44pm

"To me, one of the great problems is that Ibsen actually makes it pretty clear what happens to Nora after she slams the door: that's the function Mrs. Linde serves (in addition to being Nora's sounding-board so that we can hear all the exposition). And it doesn't involve "power." By and large, middle-class women simply didn't have any in 1870s Norway."

And yet, Gaveston, Kristine, after all her difficulties in widowhood and struggling to survive, reunites with Krogstad, his finding her again vanquishes his grief, anger and pettiness, and there is a sense that they just might be happy together. And by so doing, Kristine serves not only to advance a major plot point - by resolving the surface conflict so that the deeper issues between Torvald and Nora are uncovered - but also shows that there may be second chances in life, even for women as hard on their luck as Kristine has been and as Nora will be.

Kristine and Nora are not the same and have so far been on very different trajectories so there is no way of projecting Kristine's resolution onto Nora's future.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 10:45pm

I can say that again!

- that lawyer's son, the one who mumbles

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 11:02pm

Yes, Henrik, but Kristine rescues herself by getting married to another man. She doesn't do it on her own while traipsing across the Scandinavian peninsula.

I realize that literally Kristine and Nora aren't the same people, but Kristine's situation--her appearance on Nora's doorstep with hat in hand--speaks very much to what Nora can expect from life after leaving her husband and family.

Nora's dim prospects are what make A Doll's HOUSE a tragedy. The tragedy also makes her walking out the door all the more heroic. (Let's face it: she isn't actually trained to do anything but perhaps be a kept woman until her looks give out.)

Of course, A Doll's LIFE is a musical comedy (or, if you like, a musical play in the form of a romantic comedy). But this is just one more reason why I think the decision to write a sequel to Ibsen was an unfortunate choice.

The existence of the sequel actually "rewrites" Ibsen's play by pushing it into a different genre. But since we have a tendency nowadays to view the play through the lens of 1970s feminism, yoking the play and the musical may actually make perfect sense to contemporary viewers.

(BTW I neglected to say in my previous response that your choice of Sheldon Harnick seems exactly right to me. Not because I care whether the musical is technically accurate in terms of time and place, but because Harnick has a great knack for creating a world that is believably pre-modern.)

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 12:29am

Of course, Kristine's lucky day comes in the form of an old beau. My point was that Ibsen posits that fate can take unexpected turns. Nor does the fact that Kristine finds a "happy ending" mean that Nora will, much less that any happy ending there for Nora will be like Kristine's. Certainly opportunities for women alone were very limited but they were not uniform, as he many stories of women alone in Victorian Europe show up.

For me what's more significant - and I'd be surprised if A Doll's Life doesn't go there - is the question of whether there can be a second act for Nora and Torvald, and what has to happen to each to make that possible. I'm sure that question had great weight in the vocabulary of contemporary sexual politics when A Doll's Life was created, as it did when A Doll's House changed the modern theater forever; and it's certainly the question addressed in the last scene, and particular in the last moment of Torvald left alone as the door closes before him.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 1:33am

Henrik, as so often happens, I'm not sure exactly where you and I disagree here.

But it isn't a trivial matter that Nora is forced to forge Torvald's signature in order to borrow money and save the family during his illness. It tells us quite a bit about the status of women in 1870 and their access to credit and other such tools of capitalism.

You mention the "many stories of women alone in Victorian Europe," but honestly I can't think of many. Middle-class women could be (i) wives; (ii) spinsters; (iii) governesses; or (iv) hookers. Once Nora has turned her back on i and ii, she really doesn't have many choices left.

FWIW, Norway was NOT Victorian England. The difference was akin to Levittown and Manhattan in the 1950s.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 9:31am

I'm not sure we're in disagreement either, Gaveston.

For instance, of course those women were wives, spinsters, governesses and hookers, as you say. I would add performers to the list as well. However, there are so many stories about those wives, spinsters, governesses and hookers and they are quite different.

There were, for instance, happy and unhappy wives and happy and unhappy hookers, etc., etc. And rich and poor wives and rich and poor hookers. And bored and oppressed governesses who never left town and challenged governesses who went abroad and met fascinating people. These women were not simply defined by these four, or five, categories of existence but ran a gamut of spiritual and emotional loci.

What will Nora's new life be like? Kristine before reuniting Krogstad, Kristine after reuniting with Krogstad (whatever that is?), Lily Bart (who, became, something else entirely - a member of society turned governess turned laborer), Jane Eyre (and will her life be like Jane's if she had gone off to India with St. John - whatever that would bring - or will it be like her life with Rochester - whatever that will bring?), Emma Bovary, Marguerite Gauthier, Anna Leonowens, Mira Lapidoth or
Gwendolen Harleth, Dorothea or Celia Brook, Tess Durbeyfield or Sue Bridehead, Kitty Warren or Nana, Candida Morell, Lizzie Greystock or Lucy Morris, Irene or Annette Forsythe, Masha or Nina, Leonora or Desiree Armfeldt, Julie or Magnolia, etc., etc....

my point - and I do have one - is this:; the answer isn't made at all obvious by Nora's personality, environment, epoch, or circumstances, least of all given that A Doll's House leaves us wondering if she and Torvald might be able to find themselves together again and what will it take for them to be able to do that (the most interesting question for any librettist who has the audacity to take this on).







Updated On: 9/18/11 at 09:31 AM

[chatter]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 11:27am

Yeah, and it played the Hellinger!

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 6:15pm

Henrik, I see we share a love of 19th century literature.

But of all those heroines you list, how many were:

a. divorced; and
b. penniless?

As I'm sure you know, hiring a young, unmarried woman as a governess was commonplace; hiring a divorcee (or runaway, if not formally divorced) for the same position would be scandalous!

Nora may dance a nice tarantella, but there is nothing to suggest she has been trained for the stage. Nor has she any property that would provide her an income (as do so many heroines of Eliot, Hardy, Dickens, et al.).

You have a very optimistic view of the union between Mrs. Linde and Krogstad. The latter is a blackmailer and a bank clerk. Since Kristine went to school with Nora, I think we are to assume they come from similar social origins. Marrying Nora's husband's clerk, the latter being--in melodrama terms--the villain of the play, isn't a cause for celebration, it's a dramatization of just how bad it must be to be a middle-class woman alone in 1879 Norway!

Of course, the musical ignores the harsh realities of 19th century middle-class social restrictions and offers us a fantasy. There's nothing wrong with that per se: many musicals do the same. But doing so with Nora and Torvald betrays exactly that which made the play so revolutionary in the first place.

Still, the play survives, of course. I'm not suggesting anyone has committed a crime. But if we're going to imagine happy endings for Nora, I think we should at least admit we are leaving the world of the play and entering the realm of fantasy.

Updated On: 9/18/11 at 06:15 PM

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 7:24pm

Very funny, chatter, and, yes, I get it!

But you can imagine how hard it is to contain myself when I get a chance to converse with someone of henrikegerman's insight and erudition!

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 11:11pm

Gaveston, again - and thank you, I think, I'm enjoying it as well - I'm not sure if we are really disagreeing or just talking over each other.

I'm not all that optimistic about Kristine and Krogstad's prospects, exactly, although I do see, and I think there is support for this in the play, that Krogstad's character is changed - almost Scroogelike - by finding Kristine again. I simply regard their relationship as an unknown variable, as I do Nora's future. I certainly don't think Nora's future might be happy - and many of the women I cited were all alone with little prospects, for various reasons, ostracized by society, and many, though not all, ended quite tragically. Perhaps Nora will as well. Perhaps she'd end up like Fantine.

I'm merely saying that Nora's future is not at all clear, and, again, there is certainly the possibility for a story that brings both Nora and Torvald from innocence to experience and back to each other in a more genuine, modern marriage, which I assume was, at least presumably, the aspiration, arguably, of the creators of A Doll's Life (am I correct?).
Updated On: 9/18/11 at 11:11 PM

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 6:04am

Yes, you are correct (according to the synopsis available on line). I can't honestly say I remember the ending with any precision. (I was pretty bored by that time of the evening.)

http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_d/dollslife.htm


I had the fortune or misfortune to take a graduate seminar with Michael Meyer, who was the leading translator of Ibsen into English at the time (early 90s). We read every single one of Ibsen's plays in chronological order.

Except for a couple of his (alleged) stabs at comedy, it's hard to view any of Ibsen's plays optimistically after that.

I realize we Americans have always had a tendency to view Ibsen (and the rest of the world) through Oscar Hammerstein's rose-colored glasses. And you're right: maybe something wonderful will happen to Nora, maybe she will even reconcile with Torvald. But, as you can see, I think the socio-economics of the 19th century are against her.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, I think it's wonderful that iluvtheatertrash (prophetic name there--j/k) is doing the two plays in rep! Were I in New York or anywhere near, I would certainly come to see what he does with the two pieces. A DOLL'S LIFE may well benefit from the juxtaposition.

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 06:04 AM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 10:21am

Like so many great modern plays, the lasting power of A Doll's House haunting last moment relies on ambiguity. Will that "miracle of miracles" - ah, cue Harnick, after all! - ever happen or has that door slammed forever?

Perhaps the great allure of A Doll's Life was to explore that irresistible question. And perhaps it's greatest travail was that it was messing with the perfection, the purity, of our never knowing.

Yet, musical theater itself can sometimes wisely leave us with poignant and wistful endnotes of ambiguity. What will Tevye, Golde and company find in America? Will anyone ever hold Bobby too close? Who will Hermocrates and Hesione meet at the wedding?

Hats off, again, Iluv, for taking this on. Here's hoping Gaveston and I have shed some light on the problem that might prove, if not exactly helpful, at least of interest.
Updated On: 9/19/11 at 10:21 AM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 10:41am

Thanks for the link, Gaveston. I could only bring myself to skim it, but it looks like one convoluted plot with an endless meandering first act. Yikes.