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The plays of Henrik Ibsen travel through time pretty well by themselves,[url=http://www.soccershoes.us/]@#$%& mercurial[/url], so if you're going to muck around with the original, it's necessary to be both good and careful. Playwright Rebecca Gilman's riff on "A Doll's House" is both of those things,[url=http://www.ghd-hairstraighteners.co.uk/]ghd straighteners[/url], but not in sufficient measure for her script to justify its departures and stand on its own.
Gilman transports Nora,[url=http://www.toms-outlets.us/]toms outlet[/url], her family and her antagonists to Chicago in the opening decade of the 21st century, but follows Ibsen's late 19th century script with surprisingly few tweaks. Torvald here re christened Terry is still a banker whose reputation is at stake because of a secret financial decision made years ago by his wife. Rather than a marital widow, Nora's chum Kristine is suffering from the loss of her job at Arthur Andersen following the Enron meltdown. The blackmailing Nils Krogstad is refigured as Raj, Terry's erstwhile college pal turned med tech genius. Even the dying doctor secretly in love with Nora is still present,[url=http://www.new--balance.fr/]new balance femme[/url], though with a more up to date ailment.
At the center of the tale is Nora herself an inveterate shopper who's laden with bags from Target and Crate and Barrel when the lights first come up on her Lincoln Park via Pottery Barn home (rendered with ironic perfection by set designer Alexander Dodge). Seemingly happy in her affluent housewife life, Nora's personal journey of discovery leads to some unpleasant conclusions about her husband, her friends and her own identity.
I say "unpleasant" because, Nora's mouthed suicide threats aside,[url=http://www.polo-ralphlaurenoutlet.us@#$%&/]polo @#$%& outlet online[/url], the stakes just aren't there in "Dollhouse." It's here,[url=http://www.@#$%&-airmax2u@#$%&/]air max 90[/url], in fact, where Ibsen and Gilman or at least director Wendy C. Goldberg's take on Gilman at the Guthrie Theater part company: In most tellings of Ibsen's version, the audience feels varying degrees of sympathy for Nora, for the dying Dr. Rank, maybe even for puffed up Torvald himself. But the characters tend to flatten out into two dimensionality in Gillman's script; in the Guthrie's staging, the main characters are so self absorbed, so myopically enslaved to the almighty dollar that there is no one to root for.
Peter Christian Hansen has the requisite shallow sheen as Terry, who has successfully infantilized and marginalized his wife into mere arm candy and shows no real signs of lessons learned at the play's end. Though he speaks a few words of wisdom about consumerism and relationships in the third act, Matt Guidry's Dr. Pete feels as culpable as the me first characters he's criticizing.
But the typical,[url=http://www.truereligionjean.cc/]true religion outlet stores[/url], countervailing voices in "Dollhouse" don't do their job in this iteration. Norah Long who signifies most of her character's emotions by casting her glance upward and drawing a deep, patient breath brings some welcome warmth to the stage as Kristine,[url=http://www.@#$%&-rosheruns@#$%&/]@#$%& roshes[/url], but lacks the gravity to counterbalance all the mendacity and machination around her.
Sarah Agnew's Nora does what she must to survive: lying, conniving, seducing and at the end of the second act, literally dancing for her life (albeit to the "Flashdance" soundtrack). But there's a hardness to her performance, a controlled steeliness without the flint to kindle a spark of humanity.
Agnew is not helped by Gilman's ending,[url=http://www.ugg-australia.it/]ugg[/url], which the playwright may have intended as a kind of feminist fist in the air but brings Nora down to Terry's bean counter level. It gives the tale and the telling the faint but unmistakable tang of tin.

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