Word: torvald
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While the supporting players are all competent, with Jim Caudle especially shining as Dr. Rank, it is Julie Glucksman's Nora and Brad Dalton's Torvald who make the play work. Dalton effectively portrays Torvald's flawed character, almost a caricature of intolerance and insensitivity. Showing no understanding of human imperfection or feelings, he constructs a dream world of perfection around his doll-wife Nora and cannot understand her violating it, even to save his life. In lesser hands the role could come off as a mere foil for Nora to rebel against. It is to Dalton's credit that...
...EVENING, HOWEVER, belongs to freshman Julie Glucksman who charms and coruscates as Nora. Beautiful enough to carry off lines like "it's a good thing everything looks good on me" and delightful enough to make us understand Torvald's obsession. Glucksman also manages to sustain a fine balance between her character's outward uncertainty and inner strength. Her refusal to play the cliched "strong woman" through the first two acts makes Nora's third act awakening all the more shattering. Instead of emphasizing the potentially didactic element of the script. Glucksman convincingly brings out the deeper, more rivelling dilemma...
James Dolbear also fails as Nora's tyrannical husband Thomas, unnecessarily Americanized from Ibsen's Torvald. His mugging and blustering gives the character a sort of musical comedy quality; a cute shallowness. His tone never changes. He's not believable for a second as an ambitious, willful man, tortured by the demands of respectability--he's just a sissy, a bone-headed dolt...