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Review Reviewed Work(syf $ ' R O O + R X V H E \ + H Q U L N , E V H n Review by: Kate Kelly Source: Theatre Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Dec., 1981yf S S 8 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3206789 Accessed: 22-03-2017 01:44 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Theatre Journal This content downloaded from 104.198.4.142 on Wed, 22 Mar 2017 01:44:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 546 / TI, December 1981 an evocative metaphor for the person living free and unfettered by memories. Although Kagan's theme is serious, she writes with a humorous vision bordering on the absurd. In a manner reminiscent of Ionesco, Charles and lone harp at one another throughout much of the play as if in separate monologues that come together only occasionally to echo what the other has said. At one point Charles rants on about the word "fecund" jumping off the page as he reads, while lone explains how she discovered the electric clock running back- wards. The impulse to humor, however, does not spring primarily from the oddity of these events. In- tending to look up the meaning of "fecund," Charles asks for the Oxford, and Ione pauses in her story to tell him that the word means "fruitful, prolific." Harping on his wife's "incessant babbling," Charles goes to the Oxford and reads out the definition: "fruitful, prolific." Through repetition, Kagan weaves their separate monologues with a fine sense of comic rhythm. The imagery and humor of The Corridor reveal that Kagan possesses a substantial talent for writing believable, significant dialogue, but the play suffers from two weaknesses. First, Kagan too often tries to pack a general word with too much meaning. Lines such as the Emissary's "I've tried to reach you at other times, in other ways," needlessly announce their thematic significance. Second, at important moments in the play Kagan puts her characters in situations that carry symbolic significance but lack a basis in the conflicting objectives of the characters. For example, when the phone rings, Charles and Ione argue about who will answer it. On the sym- bolic level, their inaction shows two people refusing to admit the outside world. On the level of action, however, Kagan has not built obstacles that are strong enough to keep the characters from answer- ing the phone during its several insistent rings. The repetition of this same device in the form of someone knocking at their door toward the end of Act I com- pounds the weakness. Perhaps because the production was pulled together on such short notice, neither Joseph Warren as Charles nor Anne Meacham as lone, both per- formers with lengthy stage and television careers, seemed to have spent enough time with their charac- ters. In the case of Warren, the absence of a subtext resulted in a somewhat oratorical performance char- acterized by too much shouting. Meacham, on the other hand, was too often unintelligible because she had not yet decided which lines should be thrown away and which lines should be pointed. Not only did their lengthy lapses into memory seem to lack foundation in subtext, but together Warren and Meacham defused much of the humor that arises from the mutterings of two old people who have ig- nored each other for years. Meryl Joseph, a designer who is probably better known for her photography than for her scenery, provided Charles and lone with heavy, dark, an- tique furnishings that gave a suitably secure, memory-laden feeling to their living space. The world they fear to admit is represented by a modern- istic, free-form archway that serves as the upstage center entrance to their home. Changing color pat- terns and images that parallel the movement of the play were projected on a small screen backing the entrance. Except for an occasional overstatement of the play's imagery, the projections were unobtrusive and effective. While the performers occasionally brought the humor and the pathos of The Corridor into dramatic focus, the production failed to realize the strengths of the script and probably magnified some of its weaknesses. The play deserved a fair hearing, but Spoleto officials put the production at a disadvan- tage by misleading the audience's expectations. Con- sequently, the reaction to the production was dis- proportionate to its shortcomings. GEORGE SHAFER Northwestern University l:w A DOLL HOUSE. By Henrik Ibsen. Michigan Ensemble Theatre, Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 13 June 1981. When G. B. Shaw sat through the last act of Ibsen's A Doll House, he thought it so radical as to signal the start of the modern era on the stage. Now, nearly 100 years later, director Walter Eysselinck has used Ibsen's modern classic to introduce his This content downloaded from 104.198.4.142 on Wed, 22 Mar 2017 01:44:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 547 / THEATRE IN REVIEW Michigan Ensemble Theatre, the University of Michigan's new professional resident company. Like many Ann Arbor theatregoers eager to welcome back a resident company after a ten-year hiatus, I was geared up for the M.E.T.'s debut, but left the theatre impatient with the shortcomings of a produc- tion with such clear potential for excellence. To Eysselinck's credit, the production stuck close- ly to Rolf Fjelde's translation, including its title, for which Fjelde's explanation was reproduced in a pro- gram note: '"There is certainly no sound justification for perpetuating the . . . misnomer of A Doll's House: the house is not Nora's. . . . Ibsen . . . in- cludes Torvald with Nora in the original title, Et Dukkehjem, for the two of them at the play's open- ing are still posing like the little marzipan bride and groom atop the wedding cake." Fortunately, the M.E.T.'s Nora and Torvald did not pose like sweet, sticky puppets, nor were they simply played as an idiotically complacent bourgeois couple. Their de- votion sprang primarily from two credible sources: lust and ambition. When I spoke with Eysselinck, he pointed to repeated stage directions calling for husband and wife to touch one another and argued that had this marriage not been good in bed, Nora would have been a fool to fight for it as long and as hard as she does. Thus the M.E.T.'s Nora, played by stage and screen actress Barbara eda-Young as an ambitious, self-centered woman, clearly adored the men in her life. When together on stage, Nora and Torvald, played by David Little as a surprisingly attractive perfectionist, barely kept the lid on their passion. However, when the curtain rose on Act I, Nora entered closer to hysteria than to happiness. All the actors in the opening scene shot their lines to one another in an attempt to maintain a blindingly fast pace. During Act II, when Nora has more to be hysterical about, the edge to eda-Young's perfor- mance, in particular, made more sense. In spite of their rushing, Little and eda-Young developed a rather complicated relationship early on. In addition to their passion they shared the am- bition to climb the social ladder -Nora, by manag- ing the domestic and social end of their lives and Torvald, by managing their fiscal as well as their ethical affairs. They calculated their speech and gesture to project for themselves and others an im- age of conventional success and happiness. While discussing the play's characters, Eysselinck described the need to "cast against type." Torvald, for example, must appear both to Nora and to the audience as a loyal, trustworthy husband. And Nora must appear to be more than a helpless, dizzy house- bound girl. Part victim, part free agent, she must be played as a woman who repeatedly brings her woes on herself. By casting against type, Eysselinck avoided clich6s and brought these characters to life for a con- temporary audience. Even Mrs. Linde, a potentially boring character, was ably realized by Phyllis Somerville who portrayed her as a frank if slightly wooden realist, capable of considerable maternal warmth. Krogstadt, an inherently interesting be- cause divided character, was played with subtlety by Erik Fredricksen. The keynote of Fredricksen's per- formance was his distaste for the cheapness of his survival techniques: he was a reluctant blackmailer. Dr. Rank, admirably played by Kay E. Kuter, was both charming and morbid by turns. Kuter's Rank never resorted to sustained self-pity, even when pay- ing his last visit to Nora and Torvald. Both the high and low points in this production tended to cluster in the third act. Torvald's solilo- quy, spoken after Nora had exited to change out of her costume, perfectly captured Torvald's despera- tion to keep tidy his private and social realms. Clutch- ing at the songbird image of his wife like a line from a memorized speech, Torvald tried desperately to backtrack and patch up the gulf he had opened be- tween them. It was exciting to see, in the couple's concluding discussion, the strength and clarity of their opposing drives - Torvald's attempt to hold onto the familiar and the dear, and Nora's hardening and shrinking from a house and family that had become alien to her. Unfortunately, the impression of this final strong scene was overshadowed by an unexpected scenic ef- fect. The stage directions for Nora's exit call for her to leave through the front hallway of the doll house after which is to be heard the sound of a slamming door. Instead, what had been in previous scenes an apparently real door at the hallway's end was, in this last scene, suddenly replaced with a white flat, in- tended to symbolize the blank uncertainty of Nora's entry into the twentieth century. This break with the play's otherwise naturalistic style abruptly lost the scene's focus. Similarly, replacing the sound of a door slamming with that of a bow passing briefly over a double bass-a sound effect close to the broken string in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard- broke with Ibsen's realistic style. In spite of its flaws, M.E.T.'s A Doll House showed strong evidence of artistic and technical collabora- tion. W. Oren Parker's set updated Ibsen to a late Victorian interior colored in deep reds and rich browns. Each detail on the set, down to the This content downloaded from 104.198.4.142 on Wed, 22 Mar 2017 01:44:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 548 / TI, December 1981 re-A, i4: 44 4 i~--Z X.::: :; ~ : ?- A Doll House, Act III. Photograph by Paul Jaronski. chinoiserie, meticulously reproduced an early twentieth-century middle class living room. And Nora's costumes, designed by Zelma H. Weisfeld, followed the brown and red tones of the set until the last scene, when Nora appeared in a travelling dress of blue - Mrs. Linde's color, whose place as a lonely wanderer Nora will be taking. The lighting, designed by R. Craig Wolf, complemented the realistic set un- til the final discussion scene. Then the lighting changed slowly to dissolve the set, transforming the stage from a claustrophobic, highly textured Vic- torian interior to a room with semi-opaque walls through which could be seen the suggestion of a world beyond the doll house. According to Eysselinck, the M.E.T.'s 1981 fall of- ferings will typify future seasons. Goldoni's Miran- dolina will lead off in September to be followed by Athol Fugard's Blood Knot and, lastly, Arthur Kopit's Wings. Three distinct works from three na- tions written in three different styles, this program will give M.E.T. an opportunity to display the range of its talent. KATE KELLY University of Michigan This content downloaded from 104.198.4.142 on Wed, 22 Mar 2017 01:44:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms