Theater Review : Remodeled and Modern ‘Doll’s House’

Don’t bother looking for elegance or comfort in the stuffy, dark, onetime church and funeral parlor of St. Cecilia’s in downtown San Diego. But check out the talent on the rise. Like young couples with big dreams starting out in small, spare accommodations, young theater companies and their young, ambitious talent are drawn to such places.

Undergraund! Inc. is one such company, and its production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is well worth catching. The 1879 play about a wife, Nora, who walks out of her marriage after realizing she has been more doll than wife to her husband, gets a crisp, modern feel under the charged direction and adaptation of artistic director Ivan Talijancic.

The one flaw in this intermission-less show is the ending--Ibsen’s dated speech about walking out, dispassionately rendered by K.B. Merrill in an otherwise fine performance as Nora.

“A Doll’s House” became a rallying cry for women leaving marriages to find themselves after the women’s liberation movement. But the conclusion seems sad and naive, in the wake of bitter custody disputes, angry financial battles, escalated batterings and murders.

It’s almost as if the show ended with the sensibility of the wife who walks out in the beginning of “Kramer vs. Kramer”--still 100 years ahead of its time--without incorporating the pain when she loses her child in the end.

And while the body of the show alludes to the beatings from the O.J./Nicole Simpson headlines, the ending doesn’t address the fact that divorce doesn’t always put an end to spousal abuse.

Until that point, however, the show successfully depicts a marriage of a man who sees his wife as an asset and a wife who mistakenly believes there’s much more to the relationship.

Talijancic’s fascinating set design tells part of the story, with Nora living in enclosed white walls like Rapunzel shut up in a castle. Action in the real world takes place outside those walls, on raised platforms, on a trestle. People visit Nora by climbing a ladder over her walls and lowering themselves down to her domain.

James Kresser offers up a pompous, condescending bully as Nora’s husband, Torvald, while Merrill is lovely, lithe and lively as Nora, the child as bride. Glimmers of character depth break through as Nora connects, compassionately, to her childhood friend, Kristine (Laurie Lehmann-Gray), who needs a second chance at life, and longtime friend, Dr. Rank (Tim West), who needs a loving hand to die in peace.

Lehmann-Gray plays Kristine as a world-weary woman who has been through it all. The one hole in her performance is her inscrutability about why she declines in the end to help her friend as she said she would.

Elliott Grey is explosive and threatening as Krogstad, the villain whose revelations about a debt Nora owes him threaten to bring her doll’s house crumbling down. But more of a turn is needed in his crucial change of heart.

West gives a wondrously mature performance as Rank, the man whose passion for Nora is more acted than told in painful, penetrating looks.

Chris Kortum’s lighting and Shannon Michael Terry’s sound are integral to setting the mood as occasional flashes of lightning and thunder punctuate the scenes. Norah Switzer’s costumes--old-fashioned suits for the men, clingy, frilly and black for Norah, a dress with a corseted waist for Kristine--work well in an odd, eclectic way.

There is a brief nude scene at the end for Nora, suggesting that she is casting off her shackles with her old clothes. But it plays more as if the company were struggling to contemporize the ending.

When Talijancic finds more substantive ways of suggesting modern resonance--perhaps with silent vignettes off the main center of action--he will have gone beyond a promising production to craft a truly noteworthy revival.

* “A Doll’s House,” St. Cecilia’s, 1620 Sixth Ave., San Diego. 8 p.m. $10-$15, seniors 20% off, students $5 with ID. (619) 687-8935. Ends Sunday. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. Lee Bradley: Helen

Elliott Grey: Krogstad

James Kresser: Torvald

Laurie Lehmann-Gray: Kristine

K.B. Merrill: Nora

Tim West: Dr. Rank

An Undergraund! Inc. production of the drama by Henrik Ibsen. Adapted and directed by Ivan Talijancic. Sets: Talijancic. Lights: Chris Kortum. Costumes: Norah Switzer. Sound: Shannon Michael Terry.