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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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?"

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"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.

I can say that again!

- that lawyer's son, the one who mumbles

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.

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

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

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

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