Nora: A Doll’s House
Stef Smith, after Henrik Ibsen
City Lights Theater Company
When Henrik Ibsen premiered A Doll’s House in 1879, controversy immediately erupted when Nora, banker’s wife and mother of three, challenges the society’s definition of marriage and walks defiantly away from hers, seeking to discover who she really is beyond those two, domestic titles. Later in 1898 addressing the Norwegian League for Women’s Rights in Christiania, Ibsen said Nora was inspired by the prevailing belief that “a woman cannot be herself in modern society” because [society is] “an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.”
In her 2019-premiering play, Nora: A Doll’s House, multi-award-winning and Scottish playwright, Stef Smith, re-imagines Ibsen’s original story, stretching it over a century with three Noras confronting in the years 1918, 1968, and 2018 much the same chauvinistic, confining attitudes as does the original, nineteenth-century Nora. City Lights Theater Company presents a compelling and oft-captivating Northern California premiere of Nora: A Doll’s House imaginatively and astutely directed by Silicon Valley Shakespeare Artistic Director, Angie Higgins
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 4 E
Nora: A Doll’s House continues through February 18, 2024, in production by City Lights Theater Company, 529 S. 2nd Street, San Jose, CA. Tickets are available online at https://cltc.org .
Photo Credit: Evelyn Huynh
