References to Broadway (2023) production - Jessica Chastain

How is this production more stripped down than any other ADH interpretation?

1. Black/gray bricks of back theater wall exposed, as are pipes/other infrastructure

2. Entire set consists of five simple chairs, no props; when actors speak of lighting cigars/handing rings to one another, pause to make time for actions that never occur

3. Sometimes they move themselves, but more often turntables rotate beneath them, moving them closer together/farther apart

4. Everyone wears dark blue/black, actors have at least one important exchange with their backs to one another

How does the production begin?

1. Nora assumes her chair while the audience is taking their own seats

2. Arms crossed/expression grim, as the rotating mechanism brings her nearer and farther away in a regular, wide swoop

How many times does Nora move?

1. For the entirety of the play, she is stuck in place, even immobilized

2. 3 times when she left the chair

Which occasions does Chastain decide to move Nora?

1. The first time she rises up to greet her old friend Kristine/instantly sits back down

2. The second time she practices the tarantella - moment of exaggerated intensity

3. The third time is when she walks off the stage

How is Nora’s practice of the Tarantella conveyed?

1. Instead of leaping into the middle of the room/dancing wildly, Chastain falls to the floor, thrashing/kicking in place

2. Tarantella transformed into something bizarre/awkward and disturbing

3. Nora seems less a fully grown woman expressing desire than a child in the grips of a tantrum

How is Torvald’s suffering under the binding ties of patriarchy displayed?

1. Torvald can walk downstage and upstage, moving toward Nora/away from her, but hardly free

2. Act 3, when Nora’s deception comes to light, Torvald does not stride across the stage in anger/even gesture in way that could be described as wild or large

3. Writhes in his chair, clasping his useless hands together; at one point stretches his arms over his head/lets them fall to his lap again

4. At the very end, moves his chair directly next to hers, so they seem to be lashed in place together

5. When she stands to exit, he remains seated

6. Legal/social power, but throughout play Nora knows more than he does

How does the 2023 production make interesting/clarifying alterations?

1. Nora’s children not played by actors onstage but, recorded voices

2. When Torvald complains that Krogstad overly familiar with him, contemporary texture added, so that Krogstad said to use not just Torvald’s first name. but an embarrassing childhood nickname (power play)

3. In earlier translations of the play, Torvald calls Nora his “skylark”/“squirrel”; here he calls her not just “my little bird” but also “baby” - this “baby” is like a puff pastry of manipulation and infantilization

How does Chastain exit the play?

1. When Chastain rises from her chair at the end of this production, she exits directly out a lifted garage door at the back of the theater, onto Forty-fifth Street

2. She looks right and left, as if unsure of which way to go, then descends the stairs and strides off

3. Her carriage is perfectly erect

4. She has walked away from theater itself

5. “I’m a human being,” she said. “Or at least I’m trying to become one.” But Torvey—poor Torvey!—is only an actor; he doesn’t get to leave the stage.