A Doll's Hearse

By T.E.Kalem

A DOLL'S HOUSE by HENRIK IBSEN

Anticipation proves to have been the best part of Liv Ullmann's Nora. She is giving a middling performance in a self-indulgent vanity production. Stardom is a powerful narcotic which, like pride, has frequently preceded a fall.

Perhaps there should be a talent-depletion allowance for actors and actresses who linger too long in films. In any event, the stage makes different demands, and in the present instance Ullmann is simply not up to them. This is not entirely her fault. Her marvelously expressive face and luminous blue eyes perform exquisite miracles in camera closeups. In the vast spaces of Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater these precious attributes, and their power to move, are lost.

As to flaws, Ullmann has a thin voice with a narrow, monotonous range. In a Bergman film, with its still, deep pauses, this is not immediately apparent, but onstage it becomes a cumulative irritant. Ullmann's English is good, but not quite good enough. Taking the skylark and "little squirrel" imagery of the play literally, she skitters about the stage like a sandpiper. This does not destroy Nora's coquettishness, but it certainly diminishes it. There seems to be an arbitrary rhetoric of motions with which Ullmann plays the role. When she fears that her husband Torvald (Sam Waterston) will discover her secret dealings with the malignant moneylender Krogstadt (Barton Heyman), she makes the panicky gestures of a heroine in a silent-movie melodrama. When she reads the riot act to Torvald prior to slamming the famous door, she sits as motionless as a pillar of ice. Presumably, this translates as "frozenly adamant."

Here we are at the core of Ullmann's misconception of the role. Her Nora does not grow toward self-awareness or strive for emancipation (as Claire Bloom's so affectingly did a few seasons ago). Instead, she simply seems to assert herself by different methods. Thus there is no sense of either exhilaration or poignance in her departure.

The supporting cast cannot save A Doll's House if the Nora buckles. Still, this cast might be sued for nonsupport. With no trace of a guiding hand from Norwegian Director Tormod Skagestad, the players appear to be introducing themselves to each other at first rehearsal. As Torvald, Waterston is a mildly ruffled porcupine who can be dequilled instantly by Ullmann. Petty or not, Torvald should be a visible tyrant. After all, Nora is not slamming the door at middle-level management, but at the historic tyranny of convention.

As the man who triggers the mechanics of the play by making a secret loan to Nora and then writing her husband a letter about it, Krogstadt should be ominous. Yet Heyman merely huffs and puffs like a March wind. Dr. Rank, Nora's platonic admirer, is dying of hereditary syphilis and is in considerable agony. No one has apparently mentioned this to Michael Granger, who plays the doctor as if he were an aging boulevardier with a head cold.

Though it is an aesthetic dud, A Doll's House is a sold-out hit for its seven-week run. Joseph Papp engineered it that way by settling for star power. This is faintly amusing considering his long and loud castigations of Broadway commercialism. Too bad he didn't consult a Broadway producer before casting the play. sbT.E.Kalem

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