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by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Amy Herzog, directed by Brendan Healy

Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

January 21-February 1, 2026

Nora: “I believe that before all else I am a human being”

One of the reasons to revisit the great plays of the past is to place issues that we think of as modern within an historical context. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House from 1879 vividly illustrates the psychological damage that men’s subjugation of women has caused. Canadian Stage has assembled an ideal cast for its revival of Ibsen’s play, but the new adaptation by Amy Herzog and odd directorial and design choices prevent the production from being the success it could have been.

In reviewing Soulpepper’s 2016 production, I summarized the plot thus: “A Doll’s House is one of the foundational plays of modern drama both because it reimagines drama in a bourgeois rather than regal setting and because it makes women’s rights its central concern. Ibsen exposes the tendency in men to infantilize and objectify women in how bank manager Torvald patronizingly treats his wife Nora…. Nora’s incurious view of the world is upset when Mrs. Linde, an old friend of hers comes to visit hoping that Torvald will give her a job. The ideas of being independent of a man and working for oneself have never previously occurred to Nora. Nora’s main source of pride is that she feels she secretly saved Torvald’s life by paying for a healing trip to Italy without his knowing it. Nora did so, however, by taking out a loan from Krogstad, an employee of Torvald’s, who when Torvald fires him threatens to expose Nora’s secret, and worse, that she obtained the loan by forging her father’s signature”.

For the Canadian Stage production director Brendan Healy and designer Gillian Gallow have kept the action in its original 19th-century setting. Healy has, however, used American playwright Amy Herzog’s 2023 adaptation of the text which does not merely update Ibsen’s language to the present but also makes it so colloquial that the middle-aged-to-elderly characters of the play sound like modern teenagers. Herzog decides to make Ibsen’s language sound more natural by adding “um”, “uh”, “hunh” and “OK” to the characters’ speeches while having them exclaim “gosh”, say they are “stressed out”, refer to children as “kids” and even drop an F-bomb. Whereas Torvald simply shouts “Nora!” after reading Krogstad’s incriminating letter, Herzog decides to add “You bitch!” to it, as if we needed the words to know Torvald is angry.

Opening night audiences tend to be giddy and are ready to regard any play they see as a comedy until proven otherwise. The opening night audience in Toronto seemed to think Ibsen’s drama was hilarious well into Act 3 when it finally dawned on them that the play actually was serious. Soon I realized that the audience’s light-headedness was not the only cause for so much laughter. Herzog’s adaptation was commissioned for Jamie Lloyd’s minimalist, starkly abstract production in 2023. However, placing Herzog’s ultra-colloquialized language in the mouths of characters in 19th-century dress naturally produces an unwanted comic effect because of the dissonance between what we see and what we hear. Some directorial guidance, such as the use of pauses or the slowing down of responses, would help to temper the effect of Herzog’s text, but Healy dd nothing.

Healy’s concept for the production is odd but might have been intriguing had he followed it through in any meaningful way. He has designer Gillian Gallow place a proscenium within the proscenium of the Bluma Appel Theatre. A deep red velvet curtain rises to show the dining room of the Helmer household where all the walls are covered with deep red velvet curtains with swags just like the inner proscenium curtain. The one entrance we see is a set of carved black double doors. All this clashes completely with Ibsen’s description of the room — “A room furnished comfortably and tastefully, but not extravagantly”. It doesn’t look “homey” as Torvald says it is and it does not look like the room of a couple that until just recently has had very little money.

The point that Healy seems to make is that the Helmer’s main room is a stage. This is potentially a great idea since all the characters at some level are playing a part. Nora is acting the way she thinks Torvald wants her to act. Torvald is acting the way he thinks men are supposed to act. The only problem with this idea is that Healy doesn’t pursue it. Only once does he have Nora step outside the inner proscenium to look into the set. This would be a fascinating way of showing how Nora finally has some perspective on her life with Torvald. But, unfortunately, we read her action as simply emphasizing Nora’s desire to escape rather than a metatheatrical means of portraying Nora’s insight.

In another strange move, Healy has lighting designer Kevin Lamotte light the climactic scene between Nora and Torvald only with footlights unlike any previous scene. This gives the scene an antiquated look just when the topics the couple discuss are the most surprisingly modern of the play. Also odd, when Nora enters from having been Christmas shopping, Gallow has clad her in a bright red, gauzy gown hardly suitable for a Norwegian winter and hardly suitable for any woman to wear in 19th-century Norway. What Gallow or Healy are trying to convey with such an inappropriate costume, except that Nora does not fit in, is obscure.

Herzog’s adaptation and Healy’s direction both view Nora as the centre of the play. Both, however, de-emphasize key moments that lead to Nora’s fateful decision by the play’s end. The first is a downplaying of the importance of Kristine Linde. In the best productions we feel that Kristine’s tale of living life on her own opens Nora’s eyes to a possibility she had never previously considered. The second is a downplaying of Dr. Rank’s announcement of his impending death. We should feel not merely that the Helmers are losing a friend, but that Nora realizes from this that life is too short not to live it as one chooses.

Despite Herzog’s adaptation, Healy has drawn excellent performances from the entire cast. In particular he has Hailey Gillis bring out aspects of Nora that make Nora a more complex character than usual. Gillis initially presents Nora as a young woman who has fully succumbed to her husband’s infantilization of her. She has Nora giggle and dart around the room like a little girl and sneak a cookie to eat as if she is being naughty. But, at the same time, Gillis shows us that this is a mode of behaviour she has acquired during her eight years of marriage to Torvald. What Nora is most proud of is having saved Torvald’s life by taking out a promissory note without is knowledge. Nora has thus knowingly deceived her husband and has continued to do so every time she secretly pays an installment to Krogstad.

What Healy emphasizes more than in other productions I’ve seen is that Nora is already subconsciously demonstrates that she has fallen out of love with Torvald through her incessant flirtation with Dr. Rank. Healy and Gillis make clear that Nora can only act most like herself when she is with Dr. Rank. When Dr. Rank confesses his love for Nora, Gillis shows that Nora is horrified not just that Dr. Rank misinterpreted her playfulness but correctly identified what led him to think she returned his feelings. By the end Gillis indicates through voice and behaviour both how completely Nora has changed in being complete honest with Torvald and how painful it is for her to speak to him in such an unexpected manner.

Gray Powell well plays Torvald as a man of his time who takes the male’s superiority over the female for granted. Torvald is not a villain but simply unenlightened. When Nora finally stands up to him, he is completely crushed since her actions shatter his entire inherited worldview.

Laura Condlln’s Kristine serves as a total contrast with the Nora we first see. Condlln makes Kristine a strong independent woman who has worked hard to reach that status. Yet, she shows that Kristine is human enough to admit that she is lonely and needs someone to care for.

The person Kristine would like to care for is Krogstad, a man she once loved. Jamie Robinson does a fine job of showing us the two sides of this character. First, we see Krogstad as the villain of the play who threatens to expose Nora’s forgery unless she continues to pay him. Quickly enough we see that Krogstad acts in this way because Torvald is about to fire him. When Krogstad meets Kristine, Robinson reveals a completely different side of Krogstad as the humiliated lover. Condlln and Robinson manage the dialogue between Kristine and Krogstad beautifully as the two move from recriminations to a rekindling of their former love. The scene is one of the highlights of this production.

David Collins makes a strong impression as Dr. Rank, a dying physician who is all too aware of the irony in his not being able to heal himself. Collins’s tone of voice and style of delivery perfectly convey the doctor’s sardonic view of life as well as the pleasure he finds as Torvald’s friend and Nora’s admirer.

The cast is so ideal for this play that it is a great pity they should have to act it in an adaptation that so trivializes the language. It is also a great pity that such an able cast should be amplified in a venue as small as the 867-seat Bluma Appel Theatre. The principles have been able to project in venues like the 1800-seat Stratford Festival Theatre or the 856 Shaw Festival Theatre. Amplifying voices in plays does not bring us closer to the characters but rather just the reverse. Amplification eliminates the unmediated connection to the actor’s voice and thus causes a loss of a direct tie to the actor’s emotions.

Of the productions I’ve seen of A Doll’s House, that produced by DVxT Theatre in 2000 still remains the most successful. That production used a new adaptation by John Murrell that modernized Ibsen’s language but not to the point of Herzog’s over-colloquialization. Besides, Murrell, a Canadian, was famed as an adapter of plays, so one wonders why Canadian Stage should even seek out an American adaptation.

Still, it is amazing to think that a play from 1879 should become even more urgently relevant today as populist regimes attempt to return society to a supposed “natural order” in which women are subservient to men. Shaw called Nora’s action “the door slam heard ’round the world”. The sound still reverberates.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Laura Condlln as Kristine, Gray Powell as Torvald and Hailey Gillis as Nora; set for A Doll’s House by Gillian Gallow with Gray Powell as Torvald and Hailey Gillis as Nora; Hailey Gillis and Gray Powell as Torvald; Hailey Gillis as Nora and David Collins as Dr. Rank. © 2026 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.canadianstage.com.