Review: A DOLL'S HOUSE 2 at New Mexico Actor's Lab Santa Fe

Fifteen years ago, Nora walked out on her husband and two kids. Ever wonder what happened next? Playwright Lucas Hnath did, and he delivers the next chapter in the history of Nora, Torvald and company in A Doll's House 2.

Picking up 15 years after Ibsen's play, Nora comes back to town not for reconciliation, but to finalize her divorce that Torvald has conveniently forgotten to file. She first encounters long-suffering housekeeper Anne-Marie, played with dry wit and strength by Kat Sawyer. Anne-Marie has little sympathy for Nora's situation, but has a genuine affection for the her, despite the fact that Nora dumped the rearing of her children on Anne Marie. Nora has become a very wealthy and successful and pioneering author of women's literature and nonfiction, calling for women to resist monogamy and marriage. Ironically, she stands to lose everything without Torvald's signature on the divorce papers.

Both women set the scene for the inevitably tense meeting with Torvald - does he want to reconcile? Make Nora pay for abandoning him? Vent his frustrations of the last fifteen years?

The arrival of Torvald is, in a word, anticlimactic. Nicholas Ballas' interpretation may have been giving a nod to the more reserved men of the time, but with the script being set in modern prose, he seems very stilted and one-note. He seemed to have very little passion for this woman or for how she decided to leave him. His resistance to signing the papers seems passive aggressive at best, but the tension with Nora could have been more stretched out and tighter.

Anne Marie thinks the solution may lie with Nora and Torvald's daughter, Emmy. She brings her to meet her long lost mother and hear her side of things. Actor Alix Hudson was very capable in this role, but I would have liked to see more of the resentment a daughter abandoned by her mother must obviously feel.

While Nora meets with Emmy, Torvald comes to his senses and decides to grant her the divorce. It wasn't a hundred percent clear if his change of heart comes from the beating he receives in the street or because of his seeing Nora as a better person in her independent life. Whatever the final reason, nora knows that he has been changed by her actions.

Actors Kat Sawyer and Leslie Dillen's energy and rapport as Anne Marie and Nora carry this play - both women are totally at home and in their element onstage. Dillen is onstage for almost the entire 90 minutes, and her through line of action never wavers.

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