Long Wharf’s Gordon Edelstein kicks open the doors to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Courtesy of Long Wharf

A Doll’s House

April 28-May 23. Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Drive. $35-$65. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.

The last time a major production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House came to New Haven, it was the national tour of Lee Breuer’s abstractly literal revision, in which the sets and male actors were doll-sized, while free-minded heroine Nora existed on another plane altogether.

Now Long Wharf’s dolling up Ibsen’s classic drama of sexist culture and personal identity. Since director/adapter Gordon Edelstein sees the play as “a modern tragedy, in the tradition of other modern tragedies such as Death of a Salesman,” he’s setting the play in present-day suburban America, thousands of miles and more than 120 years away from its original late-19th century Norwegian milieu.

Ibsen’s classic can easily handle the challenge of strong concepts. Even “conventional” productions of this 1879 drama can differ drastically. Contrast the 1973 film version starring Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins with the much edgier 1992 TV version starring an unhinged Juliet Stevenson (now on DVD as part of the Henrik Ibsen Collection box set). Edelstein says he loved the 1997 adaptation by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness, which played Broadway and London’s West End starring Janet McTeer.

“Once I had the notion of setting it in contemporary America,” Edelstein says, “I knew I’d have to do my own translation.” Working from literal translations of the Norwegian text, Edelstein strove mostly to achieve a fluid modern voice. “It’s a wonderful exercise. It prepares me to direct the play.” The concept will be visually anchored with a set by the great scenic designer Michael Yeargan and costumes by Jessica Ford.

While it might be tempting, as translator/director, to twist a script to one’s own needs, Edelstein says he has not succumbed. “It’s disingenuous to say I’m doing the play as he wrote it,” he freely admits. But what he’s trying to do is show that Ibsen’s work speaks to us as we live today, not as a history lesson. “The relationships between men and women are different now, but on the primal levels are exactly contemporary with today.” He says the biggest change was having to find a 21st-century American equivalent for a financial misdealing that drives some of the plot.

Changes like that are tame and common in the theater realm, which often aims for the overblown. But, as Edelstein is the first to admit, “I’m not Lee Breuer. I’m not that kind of artist.” He adored some of the liberties Breuer took with the play, and keeps an open mind about any modern adaptations of classic works. But in this case, there’s been no restructuring of the script, no changing of the emphasis in the central storyline. “Those playwrights who are able to ‘play around’ with the text — Mamet, Richard Nelson — they’re real writers. I worship at the feet of great writers. I’m not that. And I don’t consider myself radical. I’m trying to remove the tension between the play and the audience.”

With the equally fraught element of casting, Edelstein was similarly steady, summoning assured regional theater talents with resumes that freely range from classics to new works. Mark Nelson, who plays the conniving lawyer Krogstad, and Tim Hopper (the flirtatious Dr. Rank) were both in a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre, directed by Bart Sher, and both have performed in Steve Martin’s comedy Picasso at the Lapin Agile. (Nelson is well-loved at Long Wharf for playing Bluntschli in Arms and the Man in 2001 and getting drenched in the one-man Underneath the Lintel on Stage II in 2006). As the dominating husband Torvald, Adam Trese brings a wealth of ensemble-friendly credits, including 12 Angry Men on Broadway. As the all-important Nora, Ana Reeder brings the experience of having done another Ibsen heroine, Hedda Gabler, as well as a modern feminist classic, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Donald Margulies’ modern-art relationship play Sight Unseen, all on Broadway.

Edelstein says he never plans a production with specific actors in mind. “The best way to cast is to analyze what the character’s job is. In my Doll’s House, I needed Nora to be a contemporary woman in her 30s who is attractive. I needed an actor of great physical and emotional range — great acting chops, intelligence and strength, vulnerability and irreverence. Because the very idea of this is irreverent.

“Ibsen was trying something radical. What he chose to write about was an atom bomb in European theater. He genuinely challenged how people thought and lived,” Edelstein explains. Modern audiences respond to its once provocative feminist message differently. “It’s a much misunderstood play, a play with a lot of traps. I hope people will be open to seeing it through a different lens.

“This is not a Doll’s House you’ve seen before. It kicks open the doors of A Doll’s House.”

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Werner Wolf  - Typo   |2010-04-30 20:14:37 There's a typo in the caption of this review. The play runs through May 23, not May 3. Reply 0   0

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