Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House is a scorching study of what social theorists call "false consciousness." Its two main characters, Nora and Torvald Helmer, see things not as they are but as society and custom have insisted that they see them.
Nora Helmer is treated like a child by her husband, has to hide the truth from him on a score of subjects lest she provoke his masculine shame, is forced to suppress what she really thinks and wants to say, and still imagines that her marriage is sublime and that she and Torvald are entirely happy.
Torvald, for his part, has been conditioned to regard himself as the natural master of female humans, tied to a low-caste airhead as men must be according to society but no more equal to Nora than to a particularly beloved poodle. He, too, thinks he's happy and never guesses that he's missing a genuine companion.
The story of A Doll's House concerns a crisis that arrives in the midst of this arrangement and threatens to destroy it with large doses of reality. Watching Nora try to fend off this reality and then watching both partners react as it pours in upon them anyway makes A Doll's House not just an important document in the history of human relations but a suspenseful, gripping thriller. Played appropriately, it can leave an audience scandalized, shocked and maybe even enlightened.
The current Banyan Theater production does not, I'm sorry to say, produce this result. There are several reasons, but the main culprits are the performances of Colleen McDonnell as Nora and Eric Hissom as Torvald. As directed by Gil Lazier, both talented actors play something like the opposite of what their celebrated roles require. Where Nora should be — until the last great scene — complacent and anesthetized, dully delighted with her husband and untroubled by her many hypocrisies, McDonnell plays her as super-sensitive and hyper-emotional, an explosion just waiting to happen.
Hissom plays Torvald not as an arrogant, self-satisfied dominator — which is surely the way Ibsen wrote him — but as a rather gentle, even self-effacing nonentity. Ibsen was a master manipulator of audiences, deliberately creating certain effects early in a play in order to turn them on their heads by the last act (see Brand, Ghosts and The Wild Duck, among others), but with this easily shaken Nora and this unprepossessing Torvald, what should be a cataclysm comes across as a minor shake-up.
In fact, it's only in their last confrontation that McDonnell's and Hissom's choices make real sense. At this point, it's perfectly right for Nora's emotions to be more out front, and there's nothing for Torvald to do but plead pathetically for her forgiveness. Problem is, this eventuality has been foreshadowed for so long, it's almost anticlimactic.
A brief recap of the famous plot: Nora and Torvald Helmer have what appears to be a wonderful marriage. Sure, he treats her like a favorite cocker spaniel, and, yes, she dutifully sits up and plays tricks for him, but hey — it's 1879. And anyway, things aren't what they seem: Years ago, Torvald was deathly ill, and Nora forged her father's signature in order to get a loan that would take them to Italy and better health. But Torvald doesn't know any of the facts about the loan, and Nora pays it back to a certain Krogstad with money accumulated from petty labors and duplicitous appeals to Torvald's generosity.
Then trouble strikes: Krogstad threatens to reveal the forgery to smug Torvald if Nora won't secure him a post in Torvald's bank. Torvald, despising Krogstad without understanding his relationship to Nora, fires the nefarious blackmailer, and Krogstad sends him a letter revealing all.
What happens next is one of the most famous last scenes in modern theater history, so if you don't know, you'd better see this or some other production of it. Suffice to say, this play's last minutes shocked all Europe. They can still feel shocking — if shrewdly prepared in the first hour and a half.
There's one other performance that's not quite right in the Banyan production, and that's Brad Makarowski's as Krogstad. This is another example of Ibsen's technique of evoking a particular audience response and then exposing it as short-sighted: We're supposed to loathe the contemptuous Krogstad and then discover, late in the play, that he's a pitiable human being with tender feelings and even magnanimity. Unfortunately, Makarowski never lets us hate his character. His Krogstad behaves badly, but without the passion of the truly loathsome, and when we should see a simple villain, we get instead a relatively mild fellow pushed to extremes he doesn't really believe in.
Fortunately, most of the other actors in the production offer convincing portrayals, a couple of which are marvelously put together. Wendy Bagger as Nora's old friend Kristine Linde radiates practicality and honesty as she explains that she had no choice but to marry for money and that fundamentally she needs people to live for. Bradford Wallace is excellent as the dying Dr. Rank, a secret admirer of Nora's who — in keeping with Ibsen's fascination with hereditary "curses" — suffers from a spinal ailment passed on to him by his profligate father. None of the other roles are very sizeable, but all the actors who perform them — including the three children playing the Helmer brood — are just fine.
Jeffrey W. Dean's set is of a heavy, stodgy drawing room — certainly appropriate for a man of Torvald's inclinations — and Derek Lockwood's wonderful period costumes are colorful and always persuasive. Particularly impressive is the bright dress Nora wears for a momentous costume party. Richard E. Cannon's lighting, like Steve Lemke's sound, is superb.
But what good is a revolution when there's no ancien regime? Nora should be thoughtlessly, blithely inured to living in disguise; Torvald should be a condescending tyrant who thinks that's a husband's duty. False consciousness should pervade everything. And then the crisis. And then the shattering.
And no husband or wife who leaves the theater should ever again be the same.
This article appears in Jul 4-10, 2007.