{"id":49982,"date":"2020-02-13T10:21:27","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T16:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=49982"},"modified":"2020-02-13T10:21:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T16:21:27","slug":"to-marry-or-not-to-marry-a-dolls-house-part-2-at-salt-lake-acting-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/to-marry-or-not-to-marry-a-dolls-house-part-2-at-salt-lake-acting-company\/","title":{"rendered":"To Marry or Not to Marry? “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Salt Lake Acting Company"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stacey Jenson in “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” at Salt Lake Acting Company. Photo by Dav.D Daniels<\/p><\/div>\n

\nPolitics and religion are topics to avoid during polite conversation, but today, most would also add marriage to the list. Before the middle of the last century, marriage was an assumed part of life after a certain age, but now, depending on your generation, there\u2019s a broad spectrum of opinions on the matter. A Doll\u2019s House, Part 2 <\/em>by Lucas Hnath, a modern sequel to A Doll\u2019s House <\/em>by celebrated 19th-century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, explores multiple viewpoints on marriage through three female protagonists. Nora (Stacey Jensen), Emmy (Rachel Merlot), and Anne Marie (Annette Wright) give female perspectives that clash, but ultimately build on each other, while Torvald (Paul Mulder) presents a sympathetic look at a husband left to raise three children as a single parent. This thought-provoking and well-balanced play is open to Utah audiences for the first time at Salt Lake Acting Company through March 8. For a deep conversation, bring someone with whom you don\u2019t mind debating some of the finer points of matrimony\u2019s pros and cons.<\/h4>\n

The original, socially scandalous A Doll\u2019s House <\/em>premiered in Copenhagen in 1879. The play\u2019s protagonist is an unhappy mother and wife, Nora, who is facing blackmail for participating in a simple, but ultimately illegal financial action (that women at the time had to have their husband\u2019s permission to do). Before an emotional scene where she decides she must leave her husband and children, Nora says that her whole life she\u2019s felt like a doll, played with and totally dependent on the men in her life. Part 2<\/em>, nominated for eight Tony Awards and the most frequently produced play of the past two years, was written in 2017 by Hnath, an American far removed from the play\u2019s original context. He proves to be an expert at recreating the original\u2019s Victorian world and Nora\u2019s choices and their impact on her family feel real and faithful to the original.<\/h4>\n

Each character\u2019s opinions and emotions are woven together scene by scene to create a multidimensional treatment of marriage\u2019s practicality, its function in family and society, and its role in love. The first perspective we get is from Nora herself. Jensen plays a fiery and firm Nora, now a successful author who encourages women to leave unhappy marriages. Nora arrives at her old home when she knows her ex-husband will be out. As she talks to the family\u2019s housekeeper Anne Maria for the first time since her departure, we see that she has achieved her dreams despite incredible hardship. She tells the audience that everyone should doubt the efficacy and desirability of the institution, especially considering its predatory nature and inequal legacy for women. Nora is strong and ambitious, but her refusal to contact her children seems to validate Anne Marie\u2019s assertion that she\u2019s \u201ca cold woman.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Anne Marie is the three children\u2019s surrogate mother, and has sacrificed being with her own family to help Tornvald. Although Nora proclaims how unfair it is that women are demonized for leaving children, Nora\u2019s point rings hollow against the sympathetic Anne Marie\u2019s description of the family\u2019s troubles after her disappearance. Tornvald comes home early to find his estranged wife and is immediately distraught. Mulder\u2019s acting is so convincing that it\u2019s difficult to not feel for the man who seems so crushed in the aftermath of Nora\u2019s action. Although the play begins with a logically persuasive argument about the unfairness and downsides of marriage, the emotion from the impacted parties makes it difficult to side with Nora. Tornvald was never physically abusive, but treated Nora as someone lesser than himself and left little room for her to have her own personality and volition.<\/h4>\n

The issue becomes more thorny with the introduction of Emmy, Nora\u2019s and Tornvald\u2019s daughter. Rachel Merlot plays a plucky and outspoken Emmy, who has a lot in common with the strong Nora, but has almost nothing but contempt for her. Although Nora attempts to give Emmy the same warning about the inequality in the power dynamics of marriage that she does to her readers, Emmy will have none of it. She\u2019s recently gotten engaged and is trying to fix her broken childhood with the possibility of making her own family. In a memorable speech, Emmy says that looking into the future, if people decide to take Nora\u2019s advice, they will be alone, nomads who travel from relationships and homes without the warmth of connection. Her prediction feels apt in an age where more young people live alone and delay getting into serious relationships in favor of finishing education and getting careers. Both Nora\u2019s practicality and privileging of individual empowerment and Emmy\u2019s hope for a future with an intact family life will find sympathetic ears in the audience. The questions surrounding marriage seem as relevant, but even less clear than they did in the late 19th century.<\/h4>\n

One interesting decision Hnath makes is to exclude Nora\u2019s two sons from the play. They never appear onstage, busy as they are with their own adult lives and families. It might have balanced the overabundance of female perspectives on the issues to have one or more sons weigh in about their experiences. Something obvious that seems to be missing is a look at how the children dealt with grief and what it\u2019s done to their personalities as adults. Although the less emotional and more rational Emmy is believable, the vast majority of people would not react in such a calm and intellectualized way. The missing sons may have stretched the modern playwright\u2019s ability to create a balanced view of Nora\u2019s actions, as sympathy for Nora holds best when you don\u2019t think about the sadness her disappearance caused her very young children. Another child is bound to have a reaction that mirrors Tornvald\u2019s own heartbreaking anger and desolation.<\/h4>\n

In all, the actors, dialogue, and total production provide an intriguing new look at the different ways marriage has been viewed and talked about over the past century. The audience leaves with perspectives removed in time from them, but completely relevant to the topic in today\u2019s world. Depending on your own age, your parents\u2019 marital status, and your own relationship history, you may interpret the actions of both playwrights\u2019 characters in radically varying ways, but you\u2019ll have to go to see for yourself.<\/h4>\n
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Annette Wright, Stacey Jenson, Rachael Merlot, and Paul Mulder in “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” at Salt Lake Acting Company. Photo by Dav.D Daniels<\/p><\/div>\n

Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2<\/em>, directed by\u00a0Nancy Borgenicht, Salt Lake Acting Company<\/a>, through Mar. 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politics and religion are topics to avoid during polite conversation, but today, most would also add marriage to the list. Before the middle of the last century, marriage was an assumed part of life after a certain age, but now, depending on your generation, there\u2019s a broad spectrum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1523,"featured_media":49983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3634,3633,3632,3637,3636,860,3635],"class_list":["post-49982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre","tag-annette-wright","tag-lucas-hnath","tag-nancy-borgenicht","tag-paul-mulder","tag-rachael-merlot","tag-salt-lake-acting-company","tag-stacey-jenson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 20:29:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49986,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49982\/revisions\/49986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}