Directed by Tony-winner Sam Gold, a wildly inventive new American play that picks up after Henrik Ibsen's most cherished work concludes, A Doll's House, Part 2 will boast an all-star cast that features three-time Emmy Award-winner and three-time Tony Award-nominee Laurie Metcalf, Academy Award-winner Chris Cooper, Tony Award-winner Jayne Houdyshell and two-time Tony Award-nominee Condola Rashad.
In the final scene of Ibsen's 1879 ground-breaking masterwork, Nora Helmer makes the shocking decision to leave her husband and children, and begin a life on her own. This climactic event - when Nora slams the door on everything in her life - instantly propelled world drama into the modern age. In A Doll's House, Part 2, many years have passed since Nora's exit. Now, there's a knock on that same door. Nora has returned. But why? And what will it mean for those she left behind?
The commercial theater, or for that matter the non-commercial theater, does not regularly present us with new plays of ideas - let alone comedies of ideas. Hnath's play fairly sets your head spinning with its knotty perspectives. Each scene in this whiplash-inducing (in a good way) play flashes forth a new revelation to absorb and process, although it has only four characters - and, yes, they are all essentially holdovers from the 1879 Ibsen play that Hnath is both honoring and interrogating.
With Lucas Hnath's lucid and absorbing A Doll's House, Part 2, the Broadway season goes out with a bang. It is not the same kind of bang, mind you, that ended Henrik Ibsen's 1879 social drama, A Doll's House, in which bourgeois Norwegian wife Nora Helmer walked out on her doting husband and young children with a decisive (and divisive) slam of the door. In Hnath's taut sequel, set 15 years later, the runaway bride-played by the great Laurie Metcalf, with magnificent grit and frustration-returns to confront the people she left behind: her husband, Torvald (a sympathetic Chris Cooper); her now-grown daughter, Emmy (Condola Rashad, poised and glinting); and the family servant, Anne Marie (the uncommonly sensible Jayne Houdyshell).
2017 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2018 | Regional (US) |
Barrington Stage Company Production Regional (US) |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2017 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Laurie Metcalf |
2017 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play | Jayne Houdyshell |
2017 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Laurie Metcalf |
2017 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | A Doll's House, Part 2 |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Laurie Metcalf |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play | Jayne Houdyshell |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Play | A Doll's House, Part 2 |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Costume Design of a Play | David Zinn |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Sam Gold |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Lighting Design of a Play | Jennifer Tipton |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Chris Cooper |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Jayne Houdyshell |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Condola Rashad |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Laurie Metcalf |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Lucas Hnath |
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