Fri 5/31-Sun 6/30
A Doll’s House, written by Norwegian playwright Hendrik Ibsen, debuted in 1879, so its exploration of a woman frustrated by her patriarchal marriage and her husband’s lack of understanding and sympathy is both of its time and in many ways surprisingly contemporary. On Broadway in 1975, Liv Ullman and Sam Waterson played the central couple of Nora and Torvald Helmer, and movie star Jessica Chastain starred in a recent Broadway revival.
Since the play takes on fraught contemporary issues without the benefit of the changing landscape of the past 150 years, many re-writes and re-interpretations have been staged. Lucas Hnath’s 2017 A Doll’s House Part 2 takes up the story after the famous door slam at end of Act 3, when Nora leaves her home and marriage behind. It’s set 15 years later but now she’s returning. Why? Find out when the Beck Center stages the play in its Studio Theatre, with a month-long run starting this week. Get tickets at beckcenter.org.