A Doll's House Story

Table Of Content

• Review: ‘Cabaret’ with a kinetic Eddie Redmayne can’t redeem a faltering Broadway revival
• Hudson Theatre; 946 seats; $189 top. Opened March 9, 2023. Reviewed March XX. Running time: ONE HOUR, 50 MIN.
• Post Malone’s all-star Stagecoach set includes Brad Paisley, Dwight Yoakam
• A new play about Jesus comes to the O.C. It could provoke ‘intense’ reactions
• Hudson Theatre
• Celebrities who have performed in A Doll’s House
• CBS Axes Series After 3 Seasons; Lachey “Gutted”; Stars, Creators React

She won her first Oscar in 2022 for starring in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and her other best-known work includes her Academy Award-nominated performances in Zero Dark Thirty and The Help. The Oscar winner and 2023 Tony nominee stars in a thrilling revival of Henrik Ibsen's 19th-century classic A Doll's House on Broadway, which is now one of the most Tony-nominated plays of the season. Henrik Ibsen's timeless classic A Doll's House has made it back to Broadway season in a newly streamlined production from playwright Amy Herzog and Tony-nominated director Jamie Lloyd, and starring Academy Award-winner Jessica Chastain in the iconic role of Nora Helmer. A Doll’s House is set in 19th-century Norway and follows Nora Helmer, the wife of a bank manager and mother of three children. Her life seems perfect, but there's trouble hiding behind the facade.

Review: ‘Cabaret’ with a kinetic Eddie Redmayne can’t redeem a faltering Broadway revival

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. Its last Broadway revival, a West End import staged in 1997, took home four Tonys, including Best Actress for the towering Janet McTeer. Past Broadway productions have received Tony nominations and wins, however. Though the play as a whole hasn't received many New York theatre awards, it is immortalized as a beloved classic. Even as is, though, the story of a housewife who seeks to build a life beyond her stifling marriage remains inspiring and empowering. Learn about the play's history of productions, celebrity stars, adaptations, and more below before catching A Doll's House on Broadway from February 13 to June 4.

Hudson Theatre; 946 seats; $189 top. Opened March 9, 2023. Reviewed March XX. Running time: ONE HOUR, 50 MIN.

In the nearly 150 years since A Doll’s House premiered, the show has received countless productions across the globe. 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.

Post Malone’s all-star Stagecoach set includes Brad Paisley, Dwight Yoakam

The agility of her acting, the way she can reverse course while making it seem like she’s simply following the logic of her character, is a marvel. Her performance in Hnath’s smart play is one of the headier pleasures of this Broadway season. Nora, now a successful author of polemical women’s literature, has come to define herself by her anti-marriage crusade. She may have left in search of an authentic self, but she has returned as an ideologue and social revolutionary who cares more for her causes than for her own happiness. “A Doll’s House, Part 2” isn’t typical Broadway fare, and perhaps Gold wants to ensure that theatergoers are contentedly strapped in for the unconventional ride. The movement back to seriousness, however, requires some finessing after the audience has been turned into a live laugh track.

Our top 10 best of Broadway in 2023 - Chicago Tribune

Our top 10 best of Broadway in 2023.

Posted: Wed, 27 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

A Doll's House thrust drama firmly into the modern age when it premiered in 1879. Now, nearly a century-and-a-half later, Tony Award nominee Jamie Lloyd and acclaimed playwright Amy Herzog will make freshly relevant a story that shocked audiences and brought forth a new era of theater. One of the most acclaimed actors of her generation, Jessica Chastain will inhabit one of the theater's most iconic roles, re-energizing the play for a whole new generation. A Doll’s House thrust drama firmly into the modern age when it premiered in 1879.

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Ospina relating to us the nightmare of being a wheelchair user trying to negotiate the New York subway system is an infuriating litany of stations and a system that not only need radical improvement, but also just the more basic, human, professional duty to ensure information is updated. Ospina tells us how many times she has missed personal and professional engagements because lifts listed as working are not, in fact, working—meaning Ospina is left literally underground not knowing how and when she will be able to get out. Krogstad notes, correctly, that Nora has been spoiled her whole life, but her own Faustian bargain to manage the torpor of living with Torvald crashes into a reality that is fast becoming impossible to manage and even more difficult to bear. Torvald’s objectification and deification of her as she dances—“a little looser and wilder than that dance is technically supposed to, but it doesn’t matter, everybody loved it, huge response”—is delivered with a dementedly prissy brio by Moayed.

Hudson Theatre

Don’t miss your chance to see the the Oscar winner take on the iconic role of Nora Helmer, a housewife with a secret that could destroy her perfect life — but is it really so perfect? Find out at this highly anticipated revival, also starring Tony- and Emmy-nominated Succession star Arian Moayed, also a 2023 Tony nominee, as Nora’s husband, Torvald. 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. Chastain is the latest of many celebrated actresses to play Nora since A Doll's House premiered. This play is her second Broadway outing, after 2012's The Heiress, but Chastain is best known for her films.

The excellent Thornton brings a wonderful, nuanced life to Dr. Rank—rogue-ish, cove-ish, mordantly witty, deeply caring—whose declaration of love to Nora is met with disgusted condemnation—that, she says, it was “unnecessary” to say. ” His departure from the stage, and the world, saying to Nora the double-meaning, “Thank you for the light,” is spine-tingling and heart-thudding, all at once. Chastain told the New York Times that she didn’t want to feel “like a TED talk,” and it doesn’t. If characters are not involved in the scenes, they sit at the edges of the blank stage on chairs. Stripped so utterly of conventional theatrical adornment, it focuses all attention on the words.

He is reluctant to spill his secrets, but it’s only a matter of time before he joins the others in unburdening his soul. CTG Artistic Director Snehal Desai and Managing Director Meghan Pressman lay out a tentative road map for recovery, including the reopening of one of the city’s most important stages. A Doll's House has been nominated for several Tony Awards, including Best Direction of a Play for Jamie Lloyd, Best Lighting Design of a Play for Jon Clark, Best Revival of a Play for A Doll's House, and Best Sound Design of a Play for Ben & Max Ringham. Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish. “A Doll’s House, Part 2” shifts rapidly from laughter to fury to sorrow to somber acceptance. I can’t think of many performers capable of Metcalf’s fearless extremes.

For one, she is keeping a financial secret from her husband that threatens to ruin their marriage and her standing if it gets out. For another, she realizes she's not truly happy in her marriage and wants to forge her own independent life. The play explores the themes of gender roles, marriage, and the struggle for freedom in a restrictive society. A Doll's House, starring Academy Award winner Jessica Chastain as 'Nora Helmer' in Lloyd's radical new production of Henrik Ibsen's landmark drama in a new version by Amy Herzog, plays its final performance at the Hudson Theatre. In this production, Nora hardly stands, though the other characters move freely across the stage. Seated in her chair like a silent doll, she sometimes orbits the space, which is an apt metaphor for a woman who has never, ever, imagined breaking free from the gravitational pull of her husband, the expectations of marriage, the limits of society.

Well, Chastain does deliver a few audience-cheering home truths Torvald’s way. But it’s an odd change in register, given Nora’s quicksilver and intriguing mood changes that precede it. Here, her Nora suddenly becomes a very traditional Nora—solid, determined, resolute.

Torvald is a walking, talking example of what we’d now call gaslighting, using the expressions of love and worship to keep his trophy wife – a crass modern term that writer Herzog would never stoop to – both under his thumb and on display. Concord Theatricals has secured exclusive worldwide English language stage licensing rights to Amy Herzog’s 2023 Tony Award-nominated adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House for its Samuel French imprint. With an acclaimed actress like Chastain making her grand return to the stage, it's an event not to be missed.