Preview: A Doll’s House at The Gamm Theatre

Monday, January 03, 2011

GoLocalProv Features Team

She's a heroine for the ages, and now she's back.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre brings Henrik Ibsen's Nora back to RI stages in its fresh adaptation of A Doll's House, the Norwegian playwright's landmark work.

Following such timeless themes as happiness, self-worth and gender roles down an unexpected path, A Doll's House explodes in one of the most famous climaxes in 19th-century drama, one that's created sensation and controversy for more than a century.

The play open on Christmas Eve as cheery Nora Helmer, arms brimming with gifts, revels in her role as wife and mother until a knock at the door threatens to destroy her doll house of a world forever. Blackmailed for a forgery she committed years ago to save her husband's life, Nora schemes to squelch her secret and the consequences of its revelation to her husband's burgeoning career. As matters spin out of control, she must make a life-changing decision that has shocked and divided audiences since its first production.

Behind a new adaptation

Gamm artistic director Tony Estrella has plucked Nora from her Victorian setting and recast her story in late-1950s America. Estrella said he hoped to make the domestic issues of everyday people as recognizable to audiences as possible.   "Ibsen's play is unassailable," he said. "Its structure is bedrock, its themes universal and the depth and

complexity of its humanity anticipates Chekhov and rings as true today as it did over 100 years ago."

Estrella chose to move the production to what he called a transformative period in American history. "In the late 1950's," he said, "social strictures began to break and over the next two decades issues of gender, class and race would radically rearrange the national identity.

One woman's battle to understand herself

"But every social upheaval begins with individuals struggling to break free of illusion--those created by society and the ones we impose on ourselves. This play endures ultimately because it is so powerfully simple: It is one woman's battle to understand herself."

Gamm Resident Director Fred Sulivan, Jr. (Glengarry Glen Ross, The Glass Menagerie, Much Ado About Nothing) directs a seasoned cast featuring Gamm Resident Actors Jeanine Kane as devoted housewife Nora; Steve Kidd as her dutiful, moralistic husband, Torvald; Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella as the blackmailing lawyer, Krogstad; Tom Gleadow as Torvald's best friend, Dr. Rank; and Gamm newcomer Rebecca Gibel as Nora's childhood friend, Mrs. Linde.

A Doll's House runs from Jan 20 through Feb 20 at The Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St, Pawtucket. Tickets are $30 and $40 (depending on day/time), preview and press performances (Jan. 20-24) only $25. Discounts for subscribers, groups of 10 or more, seniors and students. For tickets call 723-4266 or go to gammtheatre.org.