Strong Female Characters

Maggie Lacey and John Douglas Thompson. Worth the price of admission.

Last night, my friend Suzannah and I met up after work to grab a quick bite and then head to Theater for a New Audience (TFANA), near where we both live in Brooklyn, to see Ibsen's A Doll's House. I've never seen it. Or, at least a full production of it, but I knew the story well enough that I must have read it, or part of it, or seen a workshop, or something. It is being performed in rep with Strindberg's The Father (which I'm not going to have the opportunity to see before it closes), two classics featuring tour de force characters with the same cast. And it was really very good.

The first act (actually the first two acts of the 3-act play) were 80 minutes. And they FLEW by. I think I like A Doll's House better than Hedda Gabler (and that's saying something). It's insane to me that Ibsen was writing this strong feminist piece in the late 19th century. This amazing statement about finding who you are and then grounding yourself in reality hits home in a way that really transcends the period. I mean, it's definitely a period piece, but the ridiculous notions of what a woman can and can't be and who she is (as defined by her husband and society and her relationship to them both) is, unfortunately, still as acute an observation now as it was then. The unrealistic expectations that Torvald has for Nora, and honestly, the "miraculous" Knight in Shining Armor that Nora expects Torvald to become, are both complete fantasies. Nora is Torvald's "creature" just as she was her father's "doll", and she recognizes that she has relegated her children to that same doll-like existence. They became props, not people.

Anyway, I loved the show, and though I felt like some of the performances didn't quite live up to what I wanted them to be (a trap that is easy to fall into in Ibsen plays), overall Maggie Lacey's Nora and John Douglas Thompson's Torvald rang through beautifully.

Yay feminist theater! Yay strong female characters!