A Doll House
Henrik Ibsen
translated by Rolf Fjelde
a full cast performance
starring Calista Flockhart and Gregory Itzin
Price on iTunes: $5.95
About the play:
Nora Helmer has everything a young housewife could want: beautiful children, an adoring husband, and a bright future. But when a carelessly buried secret rises from the past, Nora’s well-calibrated domestic ideal starts to crumble. Ibsen’s play is as fresh today as it was when it first stormed the stages of 19th-century Europe.
Program note from the live performance presented by L.A. Theatre Works:
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The Man behind The Doll House
A Doll House is often referred to as a feminist play, but in a speech given to the Norwegian Women’s Rights League in 1898, its author Henrik Ibsen insisted that he must “disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women’s rights movement, since I write without any conscious thought of making propaganda, my task having been the description of humanity.” It is this acute observation of character, the underlying psychology of human behaviour and a fascination in the ways that the past influences the present, which makes many of his plays truly psychological thrillers.
All the central characters in A Doll House are, in some way, trapped by the current conventional thinking and by actions (not necessarily their own) in the past. Can they possibly make their escape?
In a letter to Munich editor Georg Conrad, Ibsen wrote:
"Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. I always proceed from the individual; the stage setting, the dramatic ensemble, all that comes naturally and does not cause me any worry, as soon as I am certain of the individual in every aspect of his humanity. But I have to have his exterior in mind, also, down to the last button, how he stands and walks, how he conducts himself, what his voice sounds like. Then I do not let him go until his fate is fulfilled."
History of the Play
A Doll House premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December of 1879, and completely sold out its run thereafter. Its criticism of views on marriage held by many at that time, was considered so controversial that Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending for the German opening. Here, Nora did not leave her home and family at the end of the play. The original ending was quickly restored and Nora’s infamous exit became a symbol for the play itself; as one critic described it, the slamming door of A Doll House “reverberated across the roof of the world.”
A Doll House vs A Doll's House
It is interesting to note that the title of this translation, composed by the acclaimed Ibsen scholar Rolf Fjelde, is A Doll House, and not the more widely recognized A Doll's House. Fjelde, in his attempt to capture Ibsen’s essence and wholeness in his own translations of the work, found the non-possessive use of “doll house” to be a more accurate title for the play. In his foreword, he states that the house is not Nora’s house, as the possessive form suggests. Rather it is a “doll house.” The later title, he explains, “includes Torvald with Nora…for the two of them at the play’s opening are still posing like the little marzipan bride and groom atop the wedding cake.” This small exclusion implies a great deal about the nature of the play, for it is the marital relationship of Torvald and Nora, not the “house” or the “doll’s” possession of it, that figures at the very heart of A Doll House.
-Rosalind Ayers, Director and Anna Lyse Erikson
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