A Doll's House @ BAM

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 9:32am

I searched for a thread, so I apologize if someone already started one. I got to see this new production over the weekend and have mixed thoughts about it.

Hattie Morahan is an out of this world Nora, and it's hard not to recommend seeing this just for her performance. This is the type of diva turn that makes you want to prostrate yourself at her feet and worship the goddess that she is. And yes, we all know that final scene is a knockout, but the entire through line of her performance is wonderfully executed. If only the rest of the cast and production were at her level...

As much as I like A Doll's House, Torvald isn't the most well-written character; Nora is so shaded and layered and her husband is practically a cartoon villain. Dominic Rowan tries to make him as sympathetic as possible and by the end I actually believed he wanted to change for Nora, but the role is what it is.

The actors playing Dr. Rank and Krogstad gave middle of the road performances. Kristine was fine, but all three of them seemed to slow down the momentum of play rather than keep pushing Nora closer to action.

The set is on a turntable and spins around a lot, ha. The transitions are pretty cool and the director has some nice tricks up his sleeve, but when the run time is 2 hours and 45 minutes I began to wish he would just get on with it!

The costumes and lighting were first rate.

I'm glad I went, and even happier that my TDF seats weren't in those wretched balcony bar stool seats. Still, I wish I had been able to become more emotionally invested than admiring the leading lady on an intellectual level.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 9:41am

Thanks for this, Whizzer. I love A Doll's House and am looking forward to this production. Agree Torvald is a very tricky role to pull off and, truism alert, that the role is what it is; but also think the role as it is serves the play exactly as it should when one has the right actor and a director who knows what he or she's doing.

From what you are saying about the pace of this production, it's not surprising that Torvald is going to bear the brunt.

But perhaps what I agree with you most about is those seats in the Harvey balcony. I recently nominated them for the worst theater seats in NY. I would have thought that BAM would have made replacing them with something far more comfortable a top priority ages ago.

Updated On: 2/25/14 at 09:41 AM

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 9:55am

I have sat in those balcony seats too many times and I just can't take it anymore! They truly are some of most uncomfortable seats in New York.

I'll be interested to see what you saw about this Torvald then, Henrik.

Something that didn't help with the pacing was that the director placed the intermission between the second and third acts rather than the first and second acts. By the time Nora had her second meeting with Krogstag it was like, "We get it, we get it! Now let us all go to the bathroom already!!"

I love A Doll's House too, and accept that it is a long play, but that makes the issue of pacing all the more important.

On another note, you really have to ask yourself what the fvck Grossman, Prince, Comden and Green were thinking when they put together A Doll's Life. NO ONE is asking what happened after the door slammed. Sure some of the score is good, but talk about a musical that didn't need to exist.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 10:26am

Interesting that BAM chose this show to produce. I've read nothing but negative things about it. I would have to agree that going beyond the door was totally unnecessary.

I remember when it played the Hellinger. I was greeted by the ugly artwork on the marquee every morning as I got out of the subway on my way to school.

Did they change the musical's title to A DOLL'S HOUSE? I remember it as A DOLL'S LIFE.




Updated On: 2/25/14 at 10:26 AM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 11:00am

Carlos there might be a misread here. A Doll's House is playing at BAM. The flop musical that asks the question what happens to Nora after the final curtain of A Doll's House is, as you probably know, called A Doll's Life. but that's not what's showing at BAM; I doubt very much it ever will be.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 11:38am

Oh my. I had a legally blonde moment there. Thanks for pointing that out henrikegerman!

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 12:57pm

Has anyone tried to musicalize A Doll's House? Hedda? Maybe his works might make better operas than musicals, but Nora and Hedda seem like they could "sing."

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 4:18pm

Whizzer, I could be wrong, but I believe the only one of Ibsen's plays to ever be set to music is Peer Gynt. Of course, the play itself has a famous incidental score by Grieg. But there is also an opera (actually more than one opera) as well as other efforts to turn it into a musical.

Updated On: 2/25/14 at 04:18 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 4:24pm

"On another note, you really have to ask yourself what the fvck Grossman, Prince, Comden and Green were thinking when they put together A Doll's Life. NO ONE is asking what happened after the door slammed. Sure some of the score is good, but talk about a musical that didn't need to exist."

My husband was the assistant casting director (working for Joanna Merlin) for A DOLL'S LIFE. I don't know about Grossman, but Comden and Green had reached a point in their careers where their names didn't automatically sell a new musical. I believe they did the show because Prince wanted to do it and his name insured it would be produced. (In scenes such as the opera parody you can see the librettists trying to cram in the sort of thing they did best.)

Having read the script (I stage-managed some of the understudy auditions), I assumed it would be fixed in California, but the show that returned to NYC was essentially the same as the disaster we had read on the page.

Nobody involved seemed to grasp the excruciating incongruity of Ibsen's naturalism colliding with musical comedy. The meeting made the former seem overwrought and the latter seem cartoonish.

***

On another note, I'm so glad the title confusion was resolved. For a while I was baffled by why Whizzer and henrik liked the musical. I now see they meant Ibsen's amazing play.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 5:32pm

Gaveston, I'm having deja vu.

As you might recall, years ago (it might have been my first day on bww... well my first day since being active on bww (I joined longed before I was a regular)) you and I had a prolonged discussion on the premise of A Doll's Life. In particular, about whether what happens to Nora after she shuts that door was worthy of investigation. You, as I recall, took the position that Nora was invariably doomed and that there was no convincing story to tell. I, on the other hand, cited some other famous Victorian ladies of literature - Irene Forsythe among them - who chose to walk out on disastrous (not that disastrous is necessarily the way I'd describe Torvald and Nora's relationship; broken or corrupted might be better words) but apparently respectable marriages and whose lives didn't turn out the way anyone might suspect.

Updated On: 2/25/14 at 05:32 PM

[stevenycguy]

Posted: 2/25/14 at 11:00pm

Are all the seats in the "Gallery" (balcony) bar-stool seats, or only certain rows/locations? I cannot tell from the seating map.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 2/26/14 at 2:28pm

henrik, I do remember that exchange, which is one reason I mentioned stylistic problems rather than the lack of verisimilitude of the plot.

But I believe THE FORSYTE (FORSYTHE? Wiki uses the former spelling) SAGA takes place in Edwardian England, the end of the story taking place a full half-century after the events of A DOLL'S HOUSE. And its characters live in or near London, not the small country backwater in which Nora finds herself.

Further, Irene has property of her own, an inheritance of 15,000 pounds. Nora walks out with only the clothes on her back. (The musical even acknowledges the problem by sending Nora first to work in a herring factory. Then she turns into Cinderella and somehow ends up at Court.)

I see no inherent problem with a Victorian fantasy operetta that tours the Europe of the 1870s. But A DOLL'S LIFE tries to turn Nora into Candide--and that's a stretch too far for such an iconic character, IMO.

(Yes, I suppose I am repeating myself in this thread, but I figured after a couple of years and given Whizzer's comment, it was okay to repeat my argument.)

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/26/14 at 3:17pm

Ah well, I hate to say it (not!) but you're right on all counts. Even the spelling (and I thought I had been careful not to add the h...).

Updated On: 2/26/14 at 03:17 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 2/26/14 at 8:02pm

I've been pronouncing it with the "h" for years. I only noticed the letter was missing when I went to confirm my memory of the period and plot.

[Rainbowhigh23]

Posted: 2/26/14 at 9:33pm

The gallery seats are the worst, they're barstools with a back and arms and the seats have very little cushion. My back is killing me and its only intermission! But on my way in I saw Ben Brantley with the actress who played Aunt Corine in the Urban Cowboy movie.

[darquegk]

Posted: 2/26/14 at 10:59pm

I have several times joked with a few friends about the sequel to "A Doll's House," a nonexistent play called "A Dude's House," focusing on Torvald after driving his wife away, as he seeks to reinvent himself as a kinder, gentler, more politically correct gentleman and has no luck with it.

[Jonwo]

Posted: 2/27/14 at 12:42am

This production of A Dolls House is fantastic, Hattie Morahan nailed Nora and I've never really liked the character but Hattie manages to make her maybe not likeable but you sort of feel for her by the end, I do agree Torval is the hardest character to pull off but Dominic Rowan did a good job,

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/27/14 at 9:54am

In heaven Monroe plays Nora and Garland plays Lovett.

[morosco]

Posted: 2/27/14 at 11:05pm

Brantley is ecstatic.
...by the end of the London-born Young Vic production of “A Doll’s House,” Ibsen’s watershed drama of 1879, my nerves were ground meat. “I can’t breathe,” said my date for the evening as we were heading back to Manhattan in a taxi. I don’t think either of us expected to get much sleep that night. But when theater is this exciting, it’s well worth a little insomnia.
A Caged Wife, Desperately Spinning Her Wheel

[nyla123]

Posted: 3/2/14 at 1:42am

Just FYI Whizzer, the director is a woman. Given the play and the general lack of female directors I just thought that was relevant to point out.

[The Glenbuck Laird]

Posted: 3/2/14 at 5:44am

Hattie Morahan is top drawer. A very fine actress. She is wonderful as Nora, worth a visit alone to see Hattie Morahan

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 3/2/14 at 9:02am

That is certainly an out and out rave from Ben, I wonder if this will secure a Broadway transfer now? Last time I saw Ben gush like this was for Glass Menagerie which path edits transfer to te Booth Theatre.

[AC126748]

Posted: 3/2/14 at 11:30am

I don't know if a Broadway transfer is possible, but I imagine whatever seats were remain for the rest of the BAM run will quickly be snapped up in the wake of that review. Glad I bought a ticket for the final performance last week before the review was published.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/2/14 at 11:44am

Has anything ever transferred to Broadway from BAM? There was huge buzz that Liv and Cate's Streetcar would but it didn't.

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 3/2/14 at 11:50am

Didn't roundabout transfer 'Brief Encounter' from BAM?