Directed by Tony-winner Sam Gold, a wildly inventive new American play that picks up after Henrik Ibsen's most cherished work concludes, A Doll's House, Part 2 will boast an all-star cast that features three-time Emmy Award-winner and three-time Tony Award-nominee Laurie Metcalf, Academy Award-winner Chris Cooper, Tony Award-winner Jayne Houdyshell and two-time Tony Award-nominee Condola Rashad.
In the final scene of Ibsen's 1879 ground-breaking masterwork, Nora Helmer makes the shocking decision to leave her husband and children, and begin a life on her own. This climactic event - when Nora slams the door on everything in her life - instantly propelled world drama into the modern age. In A Doll's House, Part 2, many years have passed since Nora's exit. Now, there's a knock on that same door. Nora has returned. But why? And what will it mean for those she left behind?
One of the most famous exits in modern drama prompts an entrance that bristles with tension, provocation and unexpected subversive humor in Lucas Hnath's terrific new play, A Doll's House, Part 2. After acquiring a rising-star reputation with spiky works like The Christians, about evangelical megachurches, and Red Speedo, about doping in professional sports, Hnath makes an audacious Broadway debut with this pithy sequel. It delivers explosive laughs while also posing thoughtful questions about marriage, gender inequality and human rights that reverberate across the almost 140 years since Henrik Ibsen's original was first produced in 1879.
Hnath's play is less a conventional sequel than a thought experiment inspired by the original. Luckily, Hnath, whose formally inventive plays include Isaac's Eye and The Christians, is no mean thinker. His scenes, typically structured as two-character conversations between Nora and Torvald (Chris Cooper), Nora and her daughter (Condola Rashad), Nora and her former nanny (Jayne Houdyshell), read as answers to an interior FAQ: what would bring Nora back? How would those she's left behind receive her? Has she achieved emancipation? At what cost?
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