Ibsen's 'Doll's House' well worth the time

Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" opened last Friday night at the John Waldron Arts Center located at 122 S. Walnut Street. The show was directed by Terence Hartnett and based on the 1997 Tony Award winning pseudo-adaptation by Frank McGuiness.\n"A Doll's House" is about a middle-class world where a married pair slowly reveals itself to be based on a few deceptions; the threatening darkness shadows the once bright light. Questions about marriage, family, middle-class respectability and social justice turn out to be fictions? Could the world of financial freedom Nora glimpses at the play's beginning become a prison? For Nora to find the answers she must sort out her obligations to her family, but also to herself. And throughout the course of the show, all these issues are dealt with.\nBy the time I got done navigating my Buick, fondly called the Red Hornet, and getting lost in the parking garage it was just after 7:30 p.m. People had already started filing into the theater, converted from an old ballroom or large meeting room. The place had hardwood floors and five rows of seats set up on risers and could hold 120 people.\nSince the play was set in the United States during the hoppin' era of the 1950s, we were serenaded by the sounds of vocalists like Patty Page and the tunes like "We're Having A Heat Wave."\nMike Price plays Torvald, the male lead. Torvald is an ambitious character with high morals and an inflated sense of male superiority. That's right. He's a first class chauvinist -- and more of an oinker than Porky Pig. Price said his lines with good inflection and timing. He also played the self-righteous husband who thinks he has the world on a string. The character is frustrating not only because he is a pig, but also because he draws conclusions out of things that he shouldn't. And no matter how wrong he is, he's always right. Torvald (Price) conveys the exact feelings that many men had towards their wives in not only the time Ibsen originally wrote the play (1879) but also in the same time period the script Hartnett is using was set.\nStephanie Harrison played subservient wife Nora. Nora always seems to have inklings of wanting independence from male domination throughout the entire show. She wants to be free just enough so she'll flex her independent minded muscle at her husband. But when she thinks the frying pan is getting just a little too warm for comfort, she immediately plays herself more submissively to make Torvald forgive her socially unacceptable behavior. Harrison, through most of the show, said her lines much too slowly and said them like Nora was reading them instead of saying them. But some Nora is better than no Nora. In another scene where she is doing a Tango so as to distract her husband, the maid comes in and says dinner is ready. Then Nora asks champagne be served at dinner. After that Tango, I could have used a little champagne myself. But by the time the third act comes around, Nora definitely comes into her own.\nKris Lee was the most notable actor in the show. Lee plays Kronagard and continually came across as a personality most at home on a stage. Lee's character was very subdued and he did well making his voice sound older than he really is. He plays the conniver out to save his neck. While he is explaining something that is a major plot driver, he does so the same way Lt. Colombo would when he's trying to get a murderer to confess by going through the crime step by step.\nDirector Hartnett was up against a lot when he directed this show running 160 minutes including 2 ten-minute intermissions. When Ibsen wrote the play, it was the norm to construct things as long and to be delivered at a much slower pace than we in the United States theater crowd are used to. And the script he was using wasn't a condensed version, it was a translation. While the first act did run slower than what I think it should have, he did a job well done. \nBut when the third act came up, I thought it would move a little faster than the first. I was wrong. The third act had Nora making a goodbye so long, if she would have been doing it before she got on a train in Los Angeles, by the time she was done, the train would have pulled into Rochester, New York.\nBecause of the way Ibsen dared to write about women's rights in the time he did, as well as the way he structured the script, made him a revolutionary, the show would be informative and people would be well served to see it. It is a valuable social commentary.\nSeries tickets for the 10th Anniversary Performance Series and individual tickets for "A Doll's House" are available at the John Waldron Arts Center located at 122 S. Walnut St. Telephone (812)-334-3100 ext. 102. You may also purchase tickets at the Sunrise Box Office at 112 E. Kirkwood Ave. (812)-339-7641. Tickets are $12 general admission; $10 for students and seniors. Members of the BAAC receive a discount.\nPerformances are scheduled for 8 p.m. today and tomorrow and Oct. 25 to 26. There is a 2 p.m. matinee Oct. 20.