THEATRE REVIEW

february 2025 | Volume 248

 

I saw this Western Gold production when it first played last year, too late in the run to review it. I liked that production very much, and this remount at Pacific Theatre with the same cast and design team is, if anything, even better. Smart and dramatically intense, Lucas Hnath’s sequel to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House builds on a series of two-way discussions. Just when you think one character has the more convincing argument, the other changes your mind. And the acting is scintillating.

For the first time since she left her home, husband and children fifteen years earlier, slamming the door on them to seek personal emancipation and fulfillment outside the family, Nora (Melissa Oei) returns. She has done well for herself; so well that she triggers a Trumpian-style backlash. Because she has written books encouraging women to leave their marriages, a judge has come after her. He can threaten her reputation, livelihood and even personal freedom because her husband, Torvald (Tom McBeath), never filed their divorce papers, as he had committed to do when she left. She has come back to try to convince him to divorce her.

Along with Torvald, Nora has to navigate conversations with Anne-Marie (Tanja Dixon-Warren), the housekeeper who has raised Nora’s three children and taken care of Torvald; and one of the children she left, her daughter Emmy (TeboNzeku), now a grown woman.

I won’t get into the details of their arguments—you need to see and hear them for yourselves. Nora’s liberationist stance in repressive late-19th century Norway checks a lot of 21st century feminist boxes. But neither Anne-Marie nor Emmy takes her side, and the final Nora-Torvald confrontation is absolutely explosive.

You won’t see better acting on a Vancouver stage this year, or maybe ever. Oei’s Nora, powerful and resplendent in a fantastic red dress, hat and boots (credit Barbara Clayden’s costumes), has so many strong arguments on her side and conveys them so passionately. But Oei also shows Nora’s vulnerability and guilt. She makes Nora’s inner struggles as transparent as her hard-earned feminist truths.

Hurt, resentful and continually accused by Nora of the weakness that, in Ibsen’s play, does characterize his stuffy, somewhat straw-man character, McBeath’sTorvalddigs himself out of the hole of anger and self-pity to become, for a time, a worthy antagonist to Nora. McBeath gives Torvald a backbone and does a wonderful job of showing how his attempts to be a good guy will always be frustrated by their marital history.

Dixon-Warren’s Anne-Marie presents the flip side of Nora’s bourgeois feminism, beautifully physicalizing the heavy weight she has carried for fifteen yearsof self-sacrifice as surrogate mother, wife and full-time caretaker. Her solidity is a wall that Nora’s arguments can’t penetrate. A tremendous performance.

The biggest difference I saw between last year’s production and this one is in Nzeku’s Emmy. The young actress has added depth and assuredness to the character, whose self-confidence and intelligence (she is her mother’s daughter) make her seem mature beyond her years. To have missed watching this child growing up would have to be soul-crushing for Nora.

Emily Dotson’s simple, elegant set, resembling a slightly rectangular boxing ring, fits perfectly into the tiny Pacific Theatre stage. Kudos to director Seamus Fera and the entire Western Gold team, and to Pacific Theatre for remounting this terrific show.

 

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