'A Doll's House' Review: Jessica Chastain Shines in Classic's Revival

Table Of Content

• Everything you need to know about 'A Doll's House' on Broadway, starring Jessica Chastain
• Major productions of A Doll’s House
• What days is A Doll’s House playing?
• Jessica Chastain returns to theater with ‘A Doll’s House’
• ‘A Doll’s House’ Review: Jessica Chastain Shines in a Broadway Staging That Brings Sparkling Clarity to a Classic
• ‘The Wiz’ revival now in L.A. is a ‘risk.’ It could also change how Broadway does business

A Doll's House was based on the life of Laura Kieler (maiden name Laura Smith Petersen), a good friend of Ibsen. Much that happened between Nora and Torvald happened to Laura and her husband, Victor. In real life, when Victor discovered Laura's secret loan, he divorced her and had her committed to an asylum. Two years later, she returned to her husband and children at his urging, and she went on to become a well-known Danish author, living to the age of 83. Nora tells Torvald that she is leaving him and, in a confrontational scene, expresses her sense of betrayal and disillusionment. She says he has never loved her and they have become strangers to each other.

Everything you need to know about 'A Doll's House' on Broadway, starring Jessica Chastain

He previously starred in Person to Person as 'Lester,' alongside Michael Cera, in Thanks for Sharing alongside Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow, in the short film Prom and as 'Ben' in the short film, Anna & The Asteroid. Jessica Chastain stars as 'Nora Helmer' in Lloyd's radical new production of Henrik Ibsen's landmark drama A Doll's House in a new version by Amy Herzog. But, of course, let’s go back to that actress on the turntable, so placid that audience members hardly notice her when they enter the theater. Shelby (Gaby Diaz), a mutual friend and Carl’s first love, who falls gravely ill. And Douglas (Ahmad Simmons), who sees and claims Henry’s adult heart with an acceptance that can seem strangely and even alarmingly miraculous.

Major productions of A Doll’s House

When it came to plays, the sparse revival of “A Doll’s House” starring Jessica Chastain tied with Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” and “Ain’t No Mo,’” with six nods each. “Ain’t No Mo” closed last winter after just 28 performances despite garnering significant critical success. Haddad, who has cerebral palsy and uses a walking frame, makes it absolutely clear at the outset that he is nobody’s victim. The show is not a “poor-me” listicle, but Haddad, Hearts, who is Deaf, and Ospina, who has cerebral palsy and uses a motorized wheelchair, reveal to the audience a panoply of situations the trip have faced—from sex to daily life and public transport—that present challenges. Jordan Fein’s direction and dots’ design are both playful and simple; and the way the play is staged (with Artistic Sign Language, captioning, and audio description) underlines not just its own carefully crafted narratives and messages, but also its proudly energized spirit. When characters put on dresses, have parties, freak out over letters, and—most infamously in Nora’s case—slam the door on the family home, there are none of those things.

What days is A Doll’s House playing?

Over time, one by one, the rest of the cast comes out, taking chairs off a stack onstage, placing them here and there, and sitting quietly with their backs to Chastain. In the scenes set in the apartment, the four visitors tend to take focus away from Mary Jane. Each of the four actors is exemplary, but there’s too much still air on stage before each of them can establish her presence, especially in the play’s first half. Stoic is not an easy look to convey to an audience, and McAdams’ performance doesn’t really take shape until Mary Jane sets up residence in the hospital. Ultimately, McAdams gets her big theatrical moment, but much of the play’s power comes from Herzog’s scheme to withhold that moment.

Jessica Chastain returns to theater with ‘A Doll’s House’

Alva NotoCarsten Nicolai is a German artist known for his Alva Noto’s sound works. He released extensively on his NOTON imprint featuring collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ryoji Ikeda, Blixa Bargeld, and Mika Vainio, among others. Nicolai toured as Alva Noto and exhibited works through Europe, Asia, South America, and the US.

It’s through his eyes and devotion that we most fully comprehend Nora’s spell-casting appeal. Whether the two deeply committed friends are engaging in small talk or something more, their love – platonic for one, romantic for the other – is truer than anything in Nora’s farce of a marriage. Nora, of course, is the wife of the domineering Torvald (Moayed, who plays conniving Stewy on Succession).

‘A Doll’s House’ Review: Jessica Chastain Shines in a Broadway Staging That Brings Sparkling Clarity to a Classic

Krogstad changes his mind and offers to take back his letter from Torvald. Kristine, however, decides that Torvald should know the truth for the sake of his and Nora's marriage. Chastain saw the subject as a worthy reason to return to the stage because it still resonates today with conversations about representation and authenticity. But after speaking with director Jamie Lloyd, she rallied and decided it was important for the audience. New York (AP) — Jessica Chastain counts her performance as Nora in the current Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House” to be one of the “hardest things” she has ever done. This Nora is more traditionally restrained in her actions than Chastain’s Nora of moments before.

We expect Mary Jane to break down, explode, get pissed off long before she does. Ibsen wrote A Doll's House when Laura Kieler had been committed to the asylum. The fate of this friend of the family shook him deeply, perhaps also because Laura had asked him to intervene at a crucial point in the scandal, which he did not feel able or willing to do. Instead, he turned this life situation into an aesthetically shaped, successful drama.

Tony Nominated, Jessica Chastain-Led A Doll's House Revival Finishes Broadway Run June 10 - Playbill

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The imagery conjures a supernatural patchwork of revenants and Superman. Sometimes the feeling is fey; other times the literalization of song ideas flirts with corniness. But the intensity of the dancer’s relationship to the material speaks volumes. Other dancers hold illuminated orbs around Henry, reminding him of his spiritual presence. He is reluctant to spill his secrets, but it’s only a matter of time before he joins the others in unburdening his soul.

The characters say they are doing things, but they are just speaking to each other. The Helmer children, Ivar, Bob, and Emmy are mentioned, they are played with and chided—but they are not seen. This stylistic trickiness is seductive at the start, but its obsessive negation of any conventions begins to annoy; thankfully the excellent actors do not. In the nearly 150 years since A Doll’s House premiered, the show has received countless productions across the globe. Personally, I was relieved not to bear witness to another forced marriage between script and score. When the book musical works — as it does gloriously this season in the revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” — there’s nothing more satisfying.

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Seeing them, she collapses, and as the curtain is brought down, it is implied that she stays. Ibsen later called the ending a disgrace to the original play and referred to it as a "barbaric outrage".[9] Virtually all productions today use the original ending, as do nearly all the film versions of the play. On the Hudson Theatre’s bare stage, Jessica Chastain is sitting on a chair, revolving on a spinning section of it. She gazes out at the Broadway audience impassively, a ghost of a smile on her face, dressed in modern, modish black. Slowly, other characters in this modern adaptation of Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House (booking through June 10)—adapted by Amy Herzog, and directed by Jamie Lloyd—sit on seats on the stage, like satellites of Chastain, as she continues to spin. His film soundtracks have won many prestigious awards, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globes.

A compromise is struck between the theater’s proclivity for story and dance’s penchant for abstraction, allowing audience members to connect narrative strands in their own way. Anne Kauffman’s direction takes a while to coalesce the various facets of Herzog’s play. As presented by McAdams, Mary Jane is more than a little wan in her encounters with the various women who visit her apartment over the course of this two-hour one-act play.

Torvald dismisses her fears and explains that, although Krogstad is a good worker and seems to have turned his life around, he must be fired because he is too familiar around Torvald in front of other bank personnel. Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish. The Tony Awards ceremony, hosted by Ariana DeBose, will take place on Sunday, June 11 at Manhattan’s United Palace.

Directed by Tony® nominee Jamie Lloyd, one of contemporary theater’s most revolutionary auteurs, and adapted by acclaimed playwright Amy Herzog, this new production makes freshly relevant a story that shocked audiences and brought forth a new era of theater. The Oscar-winning actor is currently appearing in a limited run of the groundbreaking 1879 Henrik Ibsen play that challenged the sacredness of marriage, gender roles, and women’s rights. It was so controversial for its time that many actors would not perform the play’s ending. There are no props in director Jamie Lloyd’s version of Henrik Ibsen’s drama “A Doll’s House” — no sets, no costumes (just plain contemporary clothing in dark blue), not even a curtain. There’s no dress to be mended, no mailbox, no letter to be read, no cigar to be lit, no children. All you see when you enter the theater is a vast, empty shell of a Broadway stage, the bright houselights exposing the building’s industrial brick walls whose paint has faded from show to show, and a few wooden chairs stacked in back.