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Yana Ross<\/em><\/p>\n A marriage contract at the end of the 19th century is a tough pill to swallow, nonetheless, we are still entering a certain contract of moral and financial obligations when we decide to call it a marriage. What does it mean “till death do us part”? Do you take it seriously? Is it a mere ritual, an obligation to the phantom of our parents and grandparents that their surname will live on? Performance plays with Nora as Princess-drama, a narrative of “happily-ever-after” bullshit we are fed from the childhood, fairy-tales, Disney, Elfriede Jelinek’s Princess dramas are ghosts pushing this production forward.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Yana Ross\u2019 new production of A Doll\u2019s House (Ett Dockhem) at the Gothenburg Stadsteater has generated enormous interest across Sweden, cementing her influence and popularity in Scandinavian theatre. Ross uses therapy as a framing method for her original rewriting of Ibsen\u2019s canonical text. Rank is reimagined as a psychiatrist who uses role play as a form of analysis. In the opening moments, the audience is led to believe that Rank is Torvald, when in fact he is merely playing the role of Nora\u2019s husband in an imagined scenario. He invites Nora to analyze her choices and attachments; this metanarrative reveals that this is not so much a deconstruction of A Doll\u2019s House as a form of performance analysis, a theatrical essay of sorts. There is a dubious ambiguity to Rank\u2019s role-playing, however, which from the outset demonstrates the compliance demanded of Nora in her role as patient, apparently for her own benefit (psychiatry).<\/p>\n Ross\u2019 doll\u2019s house is a moveable box made of large glass panels with an interior of sleek and simple furniture (\u201ctasteful but not extravagant\u201d) in muted colours that are sharply punctuated by dabs of bright red (a color that Nora will wear later as a reference to Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Riding Hood). The presence of a technician who films the action from outside the house reinforces our sense of being an eavesdropper or voyeur. Despite being enclosed, the crystal clear audio of the actor\u2019s voices is reminiscent of Krzysztof Warlikowski\u2019s (A)pollonia, in which visually we feel distanced or separated from the actors while acoustically we experience their extreme proximity. As the box moves around Gothenburg\u2019s large main stage the bedrooms of the Helmer home are revealed on the opposing sides of the sitting room. The pale white and gray interior of the parent\u2019s bedroom is juxtaposed with the children\u2019s room, whose walls are vividly painted with jungle animals. The children are never present on stage\u2013indeed, we only encounter them briefly through a Facetime call\u2013and yet their bedroom is consistently occupied by drunken and erotic encounters. This misuse of the children\u2019s room strongly reinforces the metaphor of a doll\u2019s house, a structure that encapsulates children\u2019s ideals of a domestic space that coalesce with Ross\u2019 connections between Ibsen and Disney.<\/p>\n Kristine Linde is made into a man\u2019s role (Kirster Linder), which shifts the gender dynamics of the entire cast. Nora is the only woman on stage, surrounded by a quartet of close male friends (Torvald, Rank, Korgstad, Linde). Her isolation is thus redoubled between her home and social world, which Ross deftly reframes through a Disney fantasy. We first encounter this reference as the house spins on stage and the four men first break the (literal) fourth wall by stepping through the house\u2019s glass walls to move to a contemporary rhythmic rendition of the seven dwarves anthem to the pleasures of manual work, \u201cHi-Ho, it\u2019s off to work we go!,\u201d that is both suggestive of male sexuality and labor. The concept of role-playing is playfully extended into the Helmer\u2019s sex life when Nora dresses up as Snow White and Torvald as one of her naughty dwarves, who needs to be whipped and punished. The quartet of men all become key players in the fantasy, the dwarves who simultaneously perpetuate the fantasy of the female sublime (a nod to Ewig-Weibliche) and male exclusivity while sexualizing female power. Even if the men compete with one another they form a bond that remains impenetrable to Nora, thus reiterating the distance that separates the collective of workers from the sublime female in Snow White. Even Nora\u2019s binge eating becomes a game that undergirds and reassures male bonding. Ross\u2019 neat turn is here is to sexualize the men themselves. They begin the tarantella, an erotically charged cheerleading routine with pom-poms. Nora joins them, following their lead and rehearsing their moves. Rather than suggesting a critique of gender norms in which women follow the idealized lead set out for them by men, this inverts the question of male sexuality, not only offering a comical take on homo-erotic bonding rituals but also asking to what extent male desire might be caught up in the erotic display of their own bodies. The tarantella thus reveals a side to sexuality that is normally repressed, but (as in the therapeutic role-playing scenes and the Snow White games, or when the men dry hump one another to Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Naughty Girl) it is not Nora\u2019s hidden character that is revealed so much as the male social world she must negotiate.<\/p>\n The whole question of racism is frequently left out of stagings of the play, and Torvald\u2019s offensive line about knitting having a \u201cChinese effect\u201d is typically cut rather than explored. Ross cast Gizem Erdogan, a Swedish actress of Turkish descent, in the role of Nora. As Theresa Smalec has argued, Nora\u2019s ethnicity is often assumed to be white and Scandinavian, like Torvald\u2019s. Smalec asks: \u201cHow does her cultural background make her a different \u2018monster\u2019 from her husband?\u201d Ethnicity is carefully interrogated through apparently innocuous slurs that eventually culminate in a racist tirade. Torvald reminds Nora that it is time for her upper-lip wax, thus criticizing her attractiveness and femininity through a veiled reference to ethnicity. When Torvald discovers Nora\u2019s secret loan, however, his suppressed racism surfaces to the top: \u201cYou are a crook, a criminal, a total disgrace, calling yourself \u2018third generation\u2019 but really you are a dirty Turk!\u201d Economic anxieties and correlated concepts of selfhood are thus racialized. Generational migrant identity, as well as ongoing problems of racism, are topics that continue to dominate Swedish public discourse around national identity, which Ross integrates skillfully into this paradigmatic Scandinavian text. There are other passing references to diversity and social equality, such as Rank\u2019s equation of political correctness with moral decay, and his dismissal of the Swedish \u201cnanny\u201d state, which he condemns as \u201cturning our nation into a hospital.\u201d Later, the audience laughs when Torvald exclaims, \u201cAre you saying I\u2019m not a fucking feminist? That\u2019s ridiculous! I am Swedish, we are all born feminists.\u201d Torvald\u2019s chauvinism and Rank\u2019s conservatism provocatively disturbs easy associations of Swedish society with welfare support, gender equality, peaceful civil society, and tolerance to diversity.<\/p>\n After we learn that Rank is dying of cancer, we see him imagine (play acting as Torvald) a long life with Nora, in which he urges her to have another child. Not only does this suggest that Rank is in denial about his own impending death, it also intimates an erotic triangulation between the psychiatrist and the couple. This impression is strengthened when a potential threesome develops. Nora and Torvald have sex on their couch while Torvald holds onto Rank\u2019s hand and the men share an intimate contact in place of husband and wife. As a result, when Nora is impregnated the psychiatrist is implicated in the creation of this new life (the two men have produced this child). Nora\u2019s refusal to give birth draws attention to mothering as labor and her denial of male entitlement\u2013\u201dit might be a boy\u201d\u2013and (perhaps) a refusal to reproduce a new generation who will also fall victim to racism.<\/p>\n The notion that freedom is sacrificed when one goes into debt is also reinterpreted. The door does not slam behind Nora in this production. Her intention to leave is framed through her refusal to be reflected through the mirror of a man (thus citing the opening role-playing scene in which Nora\u2019s emotional life is reflected through her psychiatrist\u2019s game). However, in the final moments of the performance, the men extract themselves from the home, looking as if they are landing on the moon, walking outside of the gravitational forces of the domestic space. They dress Nora as Sleeping Beauty, an infantilizing gesture that makes her look like one of the children. (What\u2019s more, the whiteness of this fictional character is highlighted as a form of ethnic drag.) The house sinks into the stage as they spin a final dance, reminiscent of an early Hollywood musical, or\u2013more recently\u2013the dream sequence in Damien Chazelle\u2019s La La Land (2016), while lip-syncing to Once Upon A Dream from Disney\u2019s Sleeping Beauty (1959), putting Nora herself to sleep. In a moment of supreme irony for a play that is perhaps best well known for its ending, the final line of the performance (also taken from the animated film) is \u201cOh, I just love happy endings!\u201d Ross\u2013explicitly referencing Elfriede Jelinek\u2019s rewriting of these fairytales\u2013thus places at risk our own complacency in accepting Nora\u2019s slamming door with na\u00efve optimism as a \u201chappy ending.\u201d The notion of debt\u2013already ambivalent in the original text\u2013linked to Nora\u2019s departure from the Helmer household renders her future economically uncertain. Her departure from her home is thus also highly suggestive of previous acts (and conditions) of migration that precede the story of a \u201cthird generation\u201d Swede. Nora\u2019s refusal to give birth to her child also dissipates when she is lulled into dreamless sleep.”<\/p>\n Bryce Lease, The Theater Times<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Premiere April 7, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\nDollhouse reviews 2018<\/strong><\/h3>\n