Windup Doll

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

A DOLL'S HOUSE

Directed by PATRICK GARLAND Screenplay by CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON

The famous door-slamming exit that climaxes Ibsen's once scandalous play about a bourgeois woman liberating herself from a claustrophobic marriage no longer shocks. The melodramatic blackmail plot in which she is ensnared for much of the time now seems a rather forced theatrical convention, not worthy of the playwright's thesis or a modern audience's interest. Its disclosure to her husband, which in turn exposes him as a hypocrite more concerned about his own status than his wife's reputation, seems both simple-minded and rather too specifically linked to a time (the late 19th century) and a place (gloomy Scandinavia) to be relevant to the contemporary war of the sexes.

Christopher Hampton's adaptation transcribes rather than transcends Ibsen's antique dramaturgy, while Patrick Garland's direction is curiously uninflected, so the whole enterprise gives off the air of a respectful college theatrical. As Nora Helmer, Claire Bloom seems to substitute aspiration for inspiration--a windup doll whose spring is not wound tightly enough under the tensions of dull domesticity in the early going, and who completely runs down in the final confrontation with her husband. As her antagonist, Anthony Hopkins acts more like a spoiled adolescent than an oppressor to reckon with. A quartet of worthy English actors--Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Edith Evans, Anna Massey and Denholm Elliot --wander aimlessly around in the supporting roles.

In all, the interest in this production of A Doll's House is mostly historical and comparative (Jane Fonda stars in yet another film of the play that is scheduled to be released in the fall). One emerges from it suffused with a feeling of duty done, a debt paid to cultural history. It is a mood entirely indistinguishable from boredom.

qedRichard Schickel

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