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by Henrik Ibsen, translated by John Murrell, directed by Vikki Anderson

DVxT Theatre, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto

November 14-December 9, 2000

“The Little Songbird Escapes”

The DVxT Theatre Company has mounted a superb production of Ibsen's classic proto-feminist play "A Doll's House".  DVxT commissioned a new translation and adaptation of the play by John Murrell, who prefers the title "The Doll House".  Murrell has updated the time of the action from 1879 when Ibsen wrote it to 1912, I assume because that is the year before the first major suffragette demonstrations in London.  In that way he is reminding us of how Ibsen's prose plays seek to examine historical forces in the guise of domestic drama.  While Murrell has brushed off the cobwebs in making the language very colloquial, his characters speak much more as if they were living today than in 1912.  His adaptation could still use editing.  Torvald Helmer really doesn't need to call his wife Nora "my little squirrel" or "my little songbird" quite so often to make us realize he sees her as more of a pet than an human being.  Not every character should need to emphasize an important point by prefacing it with "Look at me".  Despite such tics, Murrell does succeed in making Ibsen's language clear and forceful without sacrificing its subtext.

   

Director and set designer Vikki Anderson also succeeds in making this classic seem completely contemporary.  The law of the time preventing a woman from borrowing money without her husband's or father's signature is only the specific circumstance that entraps Nora, much as the loss of strawberry handkerchief in "Othello"  entraps Desdemona.  Murrell's translation and Anderson's direction emphasize that Ibsen's point is the examination of the relationships between men and women in general.  Nora comes to realize that Torvald's desire to protect his pet from the outside world, to have her as all his own, in reality masks his view of her as an inadequate human being, useful only as a pretty object.  His protection, in fact, prevents her acquiring knowledge of the world or her self.  Anderson is quite right when she says in her note that the struggle "to live with integrity is not time specific".  This sense of the larger issues at stake clearly comes across in the intense performances she has drawn from her cast.

   

Fiona Byrne and Ben Carlson--both familiar faces from the Shaw Festival--give outstanding performances as Nora and Torvald.  It helps from the start that they both look exactly as they are described.  Both are frequently compared to 12-year-olds and both Byrne and Carlson have such youthful looks that they can easily make you see the girl inside the woman and the boy hiding behind a beard.  Both roles require enormous range and resources.  Over the three hours of the action Byrne traverses the arc of her character from girlish innocence to anguish and fear until she reaches the terrible maturity that requires her to leave home.  She portrays the multiple currents of this character with such ease she seems born to play the part.  Carlson has the difficult task of making Torvald's numerous patronizing and chauvinist phrases seem completely unintentional since they are merely part of the general assumptions in his society.  He, too, does this with ease.   His rapid change from a man in full control to his complete breakdown in the last act is shockingly believable.  Both Byrne and Carlson seem visibly to age before our eyes in the last scene of the play as the one seeks a new world and the other's falls apart.

    

The parallel couple of the subplot--Melee Hutton as Kristina, a former schoolfriend of Nora's,  and  Jordan Pettle as Krogstad, a former schoolfriend of Torvald's--are not as well matched.  Hutton gives an excellent portrayal of a woman who has had to struggle all her life merely to survive and now finds that life empty.  Unlike Nora, who keeps hoping for a miracle to save her from her Krogstad's toils, Hutton's Kristina is a woman who has given up hoping for the best long ago.  Pettle has the right intensity for Krogstad, a man whose pain and desperation can find no outlet but in ruining Nora's and Torvald's life.  But his diction and emphasis of key words do not have the same clarity as the others and undermine his effectiveness.  Raymond O'Neill is excellent as the family friend and Nora's confidant, Dr. Rank, whose inherited disease makes him look at life more clearly knowing how soon he has to leave it and parallels Nora's growing awareness.  Ellen-Ray Hennessy as Nora's family's maid shows that women can be smothering as well as men.  Nine-year-old Asa Perlman, as Nora's son Ivar, seems quite at home on stage..

   

Vikki Anderson has created a simple but effective set, with well-chosen furniture to suggest an early 20th-century Scandinavian drawing room.  The most interesting feature is having a carpeted walkway around the apron of the stage so that people entering the Helmers' apartment must walk around three-quarters of the stage before entering up a step upstage left.  This simultaneously suggests that the Helmers have their cozy/oppressive nest buried in the depths of the building and shows us from the start the only possible escape route.  By having people pause on their way to or from the apartment, Anderson can play what is happening outside versus inside the Helmers' home.  Shawn Kerwin has provided very effective costumes, making Nora stand out in her blue dress or tarantella outfit in contrast to the dark colours worn by all the others.  She underlines Nora's decision to leave by having her change into a brown dress with a high-collared blouse, immediately making Nora look mature and  serious.  All is subtly lit by Bonnie Beecher, who provides just the right sickly, after-the-party lighting for the final act.  Even John Gzowski's music with its occasional dissonances helps suggest that all is not well.

   

The audience was one of the quietest and most attentive I have been part of recently.  I can only conclude that they were all Ibsen specialists on a night out, or, more likely, people who had come to see a well-known play but were, as I was, immediately caught up in the intensity of the performances and not released until Nora's famous slam of the door.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Fiona Byrne and Ben Carlson. ©2000 John Lauener.