Review: NORA by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs

I say it in admiration: this was Queer Eye for Ibsen, and it's too bad Trinity Street Players presented Jenny Larson-Quiñones's adaptation of A Doll's House over a single long weekend. Six performances is a healthy serving, but word of mouth might have created enough interest to support a second, perhaps abbreviated weekend for the run.

 

Ibsen? You may think, Isn't Ibsen old hat? He was controversial in his day because he exploded the notion of "well-made" plays, constructions as tidy as cuckoo clocks. He also seized themes that grabbed the gut, setting the foundations for realism and social engagement in the theatre. In the introduction to my tattered old 1950 Modern Library edition, journalist H.L. Mencken heaped scorn on Ibsen's detractors and declared Ibsen was "ready to be examined and enjoyed for what he actually was, namely, a first-rate journeyman dramatist, perhaps the best that ever lived."

 

A Doll's House was strong stuff when first presented in 1879. It centers on Nora Helmer, a cheerful young woman, mother of three children, married for eight years to a barrister. She's visited by a friend from her youth, now a widow in sore need of employment. Their neighbor Dr. Rank comes by daily, ostensibly to visit Nora's husband but also because of his irresistible attraction to Nora. And there's Nils Krogstad, bank employee of doubtful reputation who's desperate to keep his job although barrister Helmer, about to assume the post of bank manager, is determined to fire him for indiscretion—forging a signature, getting away with it, and showing insufficient deference. Krogstad secretly lent Nora the large sum she used to pay for a long sejour in warmer climes, necessary to re-establish her husband's health; Krogstad knows she forged her father's signature as guarantor of the loan agreement.

 

Plenty of opportunity for intrigue. Even more powerful is Ibsen's portrait of Nora as a willing captive of her husband Torvald Helmer, who treats her with the sugared dismissiveness of patriarchy—like his toy, a pet, or a child incapable of rational thought. In the last act the revelation of Nora's error, fraudulent under the law, makes Torvald explode in a self-centered, accusing rant that prompts Nora's rejection of him, his house, and even her children. Ibsen presented a damning portrait of patriarchy and a cogent example of female liberation a full century before feminism spread in the United States.

 

Larson-Quiñones delivers an honest staging of the translation by Henrietta Frances (H.F.) Lord, British contemporary of Ibsen, Theosophist, and campaigner for women's rights. Thanks to the adaptor for crediting the translator; my Modern Library edition seems to assume Ibsen wrote in English, for they give no credit for the translation. I suspect it's Lord's text.

 

 

The design elements -- Steve Williams's set and Kelsey Oliver's costumes -- are striking, elegantly crafted, and totally supportive of the adaptor's concept, which is to make the action contemporary (e.g., with phones and texting) while establising around the traditionalist Helmers a world in which sexual and gender norms are as fluid as they are in contemporary U.S. culture. Dr. Rank, male-identifying, is played by khattieQ; Nora's friend from school is not a Christine the widow but rather a gay widower named Chris who married for money to support his extended family; Krogstad, who comes across as aggressively macho, wants to give up his blackmailing when he and Chris resume a gay relationship. Even Torvald, the incarnation of unthinking machismo, has eyelids shaded in pink and blue (perhaps an unintended mixed message).

 

These modulations are clever and attractive, particularly since they do not alter Ibsen's focus or the essential plot.

 

 

Sarah Zeringue as Nora: Brava! She gives the "little songbird" or "squirrel" exactly the fluttering attractiveness required of the character, modulated with edges of apprehension and an intense desire to be loved and appreciated. Zeringue was onstage virtually every second of this 90-minute adaptation, with energy and focus throughout. It's no easy task to shift in Ibsen's final scene from nervous adoration to fierce, astonished, cold, determined indignation, but she accomplished Nora's turn in the final scene with steely grace. Delivering Torvald's condemnation and arrogant assertion of superiority in that ending scene, Patrick Shaw was less convincing; he rattled through his lines, not pausing, raising his voice or, it seemed, considering what he was saying. 

 

khattieQ as the enigmatic Dr. Rank gave us a particularly intriguing character, initially appearing in a squashed top hat that could have been borrowed from Lewis Carrol's Mad Hatter. Unless I blanked out briefly, the character in this version was flatter than Ibsen's original, who confessed his desperatel attraction to Nora when she started to ask for money to pay off her loan. She found that alarming and offensive.

 

Robert Joseph as Nora's old friend Chris was happy, helpful, and serene. Melba Martinez walked off with most of the brief scenes in which she appeared, for Ana the maid was kindly, reassuring, and as wise as many a Mexican abuelita. Sebastián Vitale, the leather-jacketed, end-of-his-rope Krogstad, was dark menance for Nora and, eventually, a reluctant, only half-trusting captive of Chris's reassurances and entreaties.

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Nora
by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Jenny Larson
Trinity Street Players

November 19-23 2025,

Wednesday - Saturday at 7:30 pm, Saturday & Sunday at 3 pm.

Runtime 90 minutes.

All performances take place at the Trinity St Playhouse, on the 4th Floor of First Austin Church | 901 Trinity St. Austin, Texas, 78701

TICKETS: Tickets are FREE, reservations are recommended. https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/trinity-street-players/nora