Gorgeous Jessica Chastain in the revival of A Doll's House
Minimalism, as an approach to theater, serves a dual function. On the one hand, it is part of a venerable artistic tradition, championed by such giants of directing as Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook, who strive to put actors first and not strive for the superficial realism that film and television more easily provide. But it also has another, more practical advantage: a production without lavish sets and costumes is much cheaper.
But the minimalism in the new Broadway revival of A Doll's House cuts right through you. The stunning Jessica Chastain plays Nora Helmer, a seemingly happy young wife and mother in Henrik Ibsen's 1879 proto-feminist social drama. Chastain is seated on stage before the show begins and spends most of the next two hours, without intermission, facing forward in a simple wooden chair. The stage is completely bare, without decoration, except for the ceiling with lamps, which lowers as Nora's world approaches her. The actors are dressed in simple, modern blue and black clothing. The effect is as if you are looking at Chastain close-up. At the performance I attended, tears flowed from her eyes at least five times. In some ways, this is an unconventional Nora: thanks to Chastain's inherent self-control, even when her faith in marriage and justice is tested, she never seems to be the frivolous, carefree creature that her ambitious banker husband Torvald (Arian Moayed) believes her to be. Chastain played another woman in a gilded cage on a journey of disillusionment in the 2012 Broadway revival of The Heiress, but it rings truer here.
Lloyd mostly surrounds Chastain with sympathetic actors. Michael Patrick Thornton, a standout from last year's Macbeth, plays the yearning Dr. Rank with an impressive mixture of Weltschmerz and good humor. Okiriete Onaodowan brings a grudging decency and desperation to the role of her secret loan shark and would-be blackmailer, and Jesmil Darbuz is believably unapologetic as her widowed friend; Tasha Lawrence gives a pretty tough scene as the nanny who gives up her own child to take care of Nora and her baby. Only the sly, irritable Torvald seems out of place in the production: played by the talented Moayed and in a sensitive new adaptation by Amy Herzog (“Mary Jane”), he is clearly unworthy of Nora’s love from the very beginning. What may look like a marital crisis is actually a matter of life and death for Nora. When Chastain comes to her final decision, she quietly but decisively leaves the house.
