Child's Play

THE MOST EVIDENT PROBLEM of this production is an environmental one. Katherine Kean's rendition of Ibsen's A Doll's House is staged at the far end of the Eliot House library. The tiny set--as deep as it is wide--resembles a box, framed at left and right by huge bookcases and poorly lit by desk and floor lamps. In the director's mind, this design concept probably seemed like a great imaginative flourish, the small claustrophobic set symbolizing the title. Or, perhaps, Kean meant to heighten the immediacy of Ibsen's "living room tragedy."

In any case, it's a misfired inspiration. Throughout the entire play, actors stumble about the cluttered little set, bumping into furniture and into each other: or, worse, they sit motionless for infinite minutes in Edward Manning's carelessly arranged shadows. The vacillation between clumsy meandering and utter stasis becomes a physical metaphor for tine overall confusion of this unfortunate production.

A Doll's House is notoriously difficult to stage. Ibsen's once radical idea of making bourgeois ladies and gentlemen into tragic heroes and heroines has become the stuff of conventional theater. The play's social commentary, so bold in the late nineteenth century, sounds amusingly quaint or downright comical if not presented with extreme care. Ibsen weaves his plot slowly and meticulously, revealing his characters as Puppets of Fate. Slaves of Society, each trapped in his own private doll house. The play demands subtlety and intelligent handling of its strong emotions and quirks of fate. Despite obvious effort, the Eliot House crew fails to tackle these sizeable dramatic challenges.

Like the set and lighting design, the other elements of the production suffer more form misconception than from poor quality. Kean has her actors play their scenes broadly, often replacing tragedy with hokey melodrama, inspiring peals of unintentional laughter from the audience.

Most regrettable is the casting of Nora Seton as Nora, who looks and sounds remarkably like Shirley Temple. When, early in the play, she twitters to her husband. "You're gonna be making a BIG salary and LOTS of money," one expects her, at any minute, to burst into a chorus of "The Good Ship Lollipop." Instead of a pampered, sheltered woman forced to realize her inner strength and need for independence. Seton's Nora is a scheming pixie. Seton gives Nora the resourcefulness of a very clever child in lieu of intelligence. We don't see Nora's growing awareness or her' sensitivity; rather, she just seems to grow older in age. When Nora finally stands up to her husband, Seton stamps her foot and squeals like an irate pre-teen. She rattles around in a part too big for her.

James Dolbear also fails as Nora's tyrannical husband Thomas, unnecessarily Americanized from Ibsen's Torvald. His mugging and blustering gives the character a sort of musical comedy quality; a cute shallowness. His tone never changes. He's not believable for a second as an ambitious, willful man, tortured by the demands of respectability--he's just a sissy, a bone-headed dolt.

In the three crucial supporting roles, only Christopher Randolph as Dr. Rank manages a solid, thoughtful performance. Jonathan Spalter makes Barnstrom--again, an unnecessary Americanization from Krogstad--a hilarious cardboard villain, right out of The Perils of Pauline. He clenches his teeth, he points accusingly, he leans over chairs menacingly, he rubs his palms in sadistic glee. If he had a moustache, he'd sure to twirl it with fiendish rigor. As Kristine, his long lost love, Kim Bendheim seems vaguely robotized. Their climactic scene together is a wet firecracker.

The important connections between events blur in the production's tedium; the vital subplots crumble into meaninglessness. The only spontaneity occurs when three-year-old Tyler Vogt, as one of Nora's sons, toddles onstage and glares at the audience. He's just as confused as the rest of the cast, but he doesn't try to hide it. Whatever the faults of Kean and company, their determination is clear, their failure noble.