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Nora and Torvald, in Plain English
By DAVID PRATT
The first draft ended with silence. The door slam heard 'round the world only was added at the end of the second draft of the drama Henrik Ibsen called Et Dukkehjem—a Norwegian phrase, the Danish scholar Egil Tornqvist tells us, that meant any "small, cozy, neat home," usually rendered in English as A Doll's House. And so it will be rendered this month when fourth-year Drama Division students perform Paul Walsh's new translation of Et Dukkehjem, directed by Juilliard veteran Mark Nelson (Simon Gray's The Common Pursuit and several new works in the playwriting program). Anna O'Donoghue plays Nora, she who goes from "little squirrel" to door-slammer, with Eric Wentz as her unbending husband, Torvald. Stephen Bel Davies, Leigh Wade, Noel Allain, and Jasmin Tavarez round out the ensemble.
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| Costume sketch by Murell Horton for the character of Tovald for Ibsen's A Doll's Hosue. |
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Why A Doll's House, premiered in 1879, for drama students in 2006? Wasn't Ibsen (1828-1906) the author of musty, melodramatic problem dramas? Well, the mid-19th century was the era of the well-made play, and any artist hews somewhat to the aesthetic conventions of his time. But Nelson—who as an actor appeared in Mark Lamos's production of The Master Builder at Hartford Stage—speaks of Lamos's eight Ibsens in Hartford capturing the playwright's "vitality and his unrelenting questions about how we live, even now." Certainly A Doll's House is both vital and unrelenting, beginning with Krogstad's threat that he will reveal Nora's well-intentioned forgery to the righteous Torvald, on whom she so depends; then Nora's maneuvering to stop the revelation; her anxious attempts to please Torvald, culminating in a frantic tarantella rehearsed for his approval—and the whole confined to a single room. And then that famous door-slam, after Torvald discovers the forgery, berates his wife, then does an about-face, only because Krogstad sends a second note saying he will keep silent. Of what would seem to be a wife's simple, though shocking, act of abandonment, the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, who brought A Doll's House to New York in 1975, says in Tornqvist's production history of the play, "Nora's most beautiful act of love is leaving her husband. She says goodbye to everything familiar and secure. She does not walk through the door to find somebody else to live with and for; she is leaving the house more insecure than she ever realized she could be. But she hopes to find out who she is and why she is."
Musty?
We think not.
But if you still recall Ibsen as all melodramatic speechifying, the fault may lie with the translation. Many Ibsen translations are in British English, which may sound stiff to American ears. Even American English must contend with a certain flatness in the original. Ibsen wrote in an unheightened Dano-Norwegian, close to today's "Book Norwegian," that includes much of what Walsh calls "hemming and hawing" (in English this translates into lots of "And so," "Well, now," etc.). Scandinavian languages also make frequent use of the "dummy subject," as in, "It is such that …"
"I had read five translations of A Doll's House before Paul's," says Nelson, "and found them all either formal or British-sounding, being written for British actors. I was eager to find a version in lean, direct American language, one that preserved the period but made the characters vividly accessible to young actors." Nelson subsequently spoke to a friend, Carey Perloff, who had commissioned and directed Walsh's translation for San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater in 2004. Soon Walsh received an e-mail from James Houghton, the new director of Juilliard's Drama Division. Would Walsh like his A Doll's House to have its New York premiere at Juilliard? Walsh agreed. "Young actors can teach you about a play with which you are familiar," he says, "because they ask questions and they bring a fresh set of eyes. They make you aware of when your translation has become unuseful or untrue to the original spirit."
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| Costume sketches by Murell Horton for the characters of the Maid/Nurse (above) and Nora (below) for Ibsen's A Doll's Hosue. |
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Walsh, a dramaturg at the University of Massachusetts who began by translating Strindberg (Swedish and Norwegian are not too far apart; in Stockholm Ibsen's play is Ett Dockhem), wanted to sharpen the language, to give the play a freshness by rendering it in "a language that wouldn't stop the audience" At the same time, this will not be a reinterpretation or adaptation (though that is how the United States got its first A Doll's House, a comically punched up version called The Child Wife in Milwaukee in 1882). Of his translation Walsh says, "I serve the piece that's on the table. You come thinking it's A Doll's House, and it is." And if Nora sounds a bit melodramatic and the dying Dr. Rank overly formal, Walsh says that is how Ibsen created those characters: "Nora can be incredibly melodramatic! She's looking for a language in which she can discuss the situation she's in. That melodramatic language is part of the richness. And Dr. Rank's strange formality, so full of bitterness and humor, is his way of at once dismissing and reveling in his predicament."
And finally, what of that famous door slam that ends A Doll's House? Even with its language freshened, could the once provocative problem drama have become a feminist cliché by now?
"Nora's decision to leave her home and children is still astonishing in 2006," Nelson says. He explains that Nora's transformation is a challenge both to women and to men. A Doll's House is about the courage required and the cost of knowing your soul, no matter what the world wants to make of you, no matter how confining its opinions. Both of Ibsen's main characters take painful journeys. Torvald, too, loses a comfortable, unexamined certainty and begins to see his life and self clearly. Nelson reminds us of Ibsen's famous remark when he was honored by the Norwegian Society for Women's Rights. "I thank you for your toast," said the playwright, "but I must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for women's rights. I am not even quite sure what women's rights really are. To me it has been a question of human rights."
Cliché?
We think not.
Rather, in light of the play it remarks on, it is a provocative and resonant statement. And, also in light of the play it remarks on, it demands that we attend to and listen to it as we would to our own hearts, and examine it, as a gateway to examining our own souls. What might our dukkehjem be now, today? Is it melodramatic to ask?
David Pratt is a freelance arts writer and development consultant living in New York City. In addition to The Juilliard Journal, he has written for The New York Times, Playbill, and many other publications. The author acknowledges his debt to Egil Tornqvist's commentary on the text and production history of Ibsen's Et Dukkehjem, over which he hunched during many a ride on the Broadway local.
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