Ingmar Bergman apparently thought he could best Ibsen in staging the story of Nora, a woman who leaves home and husband when she realizes she’s been mistreated and will always be unfulfilled. Bergman’s version of A Doll’s House cuts out emphasis on many of the 19th century conventions that were so hard on Nora. But these transformed her from acting like a doll to being a gutsy woman. That Ibsen gave her stronger, as well as unpleasant, alternatives to her final action, to my mind adds to the superiority of Ibsen’s original heroine and play. With Nora’s end apparent from the start, director Andrei Malaev-Babel gets suspense from how others will fare. It is almost her husband Torvald’s story, as he is the major character who changes, if only a little. Mike Perez makes Torvald’s realization of his wife’s strength believable, not easy when it’s so swift as written by Bergman. But neither the director or Perez substantiate Torvald getting his wife up on a table in flinging skirt and high heels to (sort of) dance a tarantella. Maybe all the preceding kissing between the two was meant to make everything that follows between them sexy. Jessie Taylor’s Nora is no doll. She’s like a Shavian woman except for her apparent inability to do the math involved in her indebtedness to Krogstad. Rob Glauz stresses that lawyer’s relentless dunning of Nora. He never gets a bit of sympathy over his job loss, though it’s tempting to almost admire his boldness in confrontations with such a superwoman. Danielle Renelia is closer than Taylor physically to Ibsen’s Nora. As the widow Christine, she’s a pitiful (in more ways than one) character, but she does utter common sense amiably. Though it’s obvious that Jacob Sherburne’s Doctor Rank loves Nora, he seems to have little else to contribute significantly. I think Amber Lageman appears briefly as Hilde, the young daughter Nora’s leaving behind, but whoever it is in the shadows seems old enough to cope. Ironically, since Bergman’s Nora doesn’t hear her daughter’s cry as she pauses before finally shutting the door and going outside, she isn’t really needed on or even off stage toward the end. Red lights, dark shadows, footlights create an atmosphere of doom that’s appropriate. Characters spring onto and off the central performance area from seats at each side, so their movement from scene to scene is cinematic. I’m not sure about the period of the various characters’ dress, but the actors seem comfortable in their costumes.
