Review: Marriage, Deconstructed in 'A Doll's House, Part 2'

It begins with a knock.

And when the family servant Anne Marie (Jayne Houdyshell) opens the door, there is Nora, a whirlwind of opinions and self-righteousness. Fifteen years ago, she left her husband and children behind. Now she has returned, to ask a favor.

You don't need to have seen Henrik Ibsen's classic play "A Doll's House" to find Lucas Hnath's splendid "A Doll's House, Part 2" deeply satisfying (and very funny). In the first play, Nora awakens to the restrictions placed on her merely because it is 1879 and she is female. She does something about it: she leaves, and lets the door slam behind her.

Now, we learn that by following her bliss, she has become incredibly successful — if also more self-involved. Her new life will be destroyed if her husband Torvald (Chris Cooper) does not grant her a divorce.

Nora, played by a flinty-eyed Laurie Metcalf, has no regrets. More, she seems to not care that her request will bring additional pain to Torvald or that it might upend the life of her children, particularly Emmy (an astounding Condola Rashad), who is evidently just as genteelly tough as her absent mother.

The four characters battle over what makes a marriage and whether marriage can ever be part of a happy life. But in Hnath and director Sam Gold's telling, none of them are straw men (or women). Each has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they feel like they do. We are left with the bleak idea that some chasms are too deep to ever be bridged, no matter how well-meaning the intentions. 

A Doll's House Part 2

By Lucas Hnath, directed by Sam Gold

At Broadway's Golden Theatre through July 23.