Housewives don’t get any more desperate than Nora, the up-against-the-wall protagonist of Antaeus Theatre Company’s enthralling, entertaining latest, Ingmar Bergman’s smartly streamlined take on Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

Bergman’s 1981 adaptation trims the 1879 Ibsen original not only in length (Nora’s 90 minutes down from A Doll’s House’s three hours) but in cast size (only the drama’s five major players remain), just two of the reasons Nora feels like it could have been written this year.

Another is Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker’s translation into modern colloquial English, their dialog sounding even more like contemporary speech when delivered by an all-around stellar Antaeus cast.

Like Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Bergman’s Nora introduces us to Torvald and Nora Helmer (Brian Tichnell and Jocelyn Towne), whose idyllic 1870s marriage is beginning to show signs of cracking.

On the plus side, Torvald has recovered from an illness that nearly killed him several years back thanks to the couple’s year-long sojourn in Italy, a trip Torvald has been led to believe was made possible by a gift from Nora’s now deceased father.

On the minus side, a pair of unexpected visitors are about to threaten everything Nora holds dear.

First to show up is Nora’s childhood friend Kristine Linde (Mildred Marie Langford), a widowed mother of three who’s returned to town after a ten-year absence with a favor to ask, to wit, couldn’t Nora use her wifely charms to get Kristine a job at Torvald’s bank?

Even more status quo-threatening to Nora is the arrival of Nils Krogstad (Michael Kirby), whose checkered past (one which includes forgery) is about to cost him his job at Torvald’s bank, that is unless Nora can convince her husband to keep him on the payroll.

If not, well in that case there’d be nothing to stop Krogstad from revealing that it was he who secretly financed the couple’s trip to Italy, a loan Nora has been paying back bit by bit behind Torvald’s back.

Completing the cast of dramatis personae is family friend Dr. Rank (Peter James Smith), secretly in love with Nora and terminally ill to boot.

With a blackmailer capable of destroying her marriage in pursuit, a long-ago school chum more than willing to take over said blackmailer’s job at Torvald’s bank, and a close friend who’d like nothing more than to be the man in Nora’s life, it’s no wonder our heroine finds herself a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Not only does Bergman’s Nora chop Ibsen’s A Doll House down to half its running time and cast size, it scores bonus points for the openhandedness with which it treats its characters.

By rendering Nora’s husband less condescending (and consequently more likable) than in Ibsen’s original, Bergman makes it harder for us to see Torvald as victimizer and Nora as his victim.

For this reason too, Bergman’s Nora becomes something other than an ahead-of-her-times feminist poster child. She’s simply a woman daring to assert her independence, husband and children be damned.

Returning to Antaeus for the first time since directing 2018’s The Little Foxes, Cameron Watson elicits one richly nuanced performance after another beginning with Towne’s captivating, compelling, quicksilver star turn as Nora, a character whose final confrontation with a naked-and-vulnerable Torvald is as fierce and ferocious as it gets, and Tichnell too does stunning work as a man whom most women of that time would likely find the perfect, loving, supportive spouse.

In smaller but no less memorably played roles, Langford gives Mrs. Linde a backbone of steel beneath her seemingly meek-and-mild exterior, Kirby creates a Krogstad who’s only doing what a man needs to do to protect his job and family, and Smith invests Dr. Rank with equal parts poignancy and power.

Tesshi Nakagawa’s exquisitely textured scenic design, Terri A. Lewis’s elegantly styled period costumes, Jared A. Sayeg’s strikingly dramatic lighting design, and sound designer Jeff Gardner’s potent mix of Ellen Mandel’s suspense-enhancing musical underscoring and his own sound effects (including offstage children at play) are all topnotch as are Aaron Lyons’ just-right properties.

Finally, choreographer Jean Michelle Sayeg gives Nora a deliciously frenzied tarantella to dance.

Carly DW Bones is intimacy director (and there’s plenty of intimacy to be directed). Max Tel is assistant director. Talya Camras is production stage manager and Casey Collaso is assistant stage manager.

By stripping Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House down to basics, Ingmar Bergman has taken a 19th-century classic and made it even more impactful than ever, proof positive of which can be seen in this pitch-perfect Antaeus Theatre Company revival.

Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center, 110 East Broadway, Glendale. Through May 26. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 2:00. Also Mondays May 13 and 20 at 8:00. No performance Friday May 10.
www.Antaeus.org

–Steven Stanley
April 26, 2024
Photos: Jenny Graham

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker, Henrik Ibsen, Ingmar Bergman, The Antaeus Company