{"id":89406,"date":"2026-07-16T09:53:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/?p=89406"},"modified":"2026-07-16T09:53:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:53:31","slug":"theater-news-nora-comes-knocking-in-a-dolls-house-part-2-at-long-beach-playhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/eat-see-do-2\/see\/theater-news-nora-comes-knocking-in-a-dolls-house-part-2-at-long-beach-playhouse","title":{"rendered":"Theater News: Nora comes knocking in \u2018A Doll\u2019s House, Part 2\u2019 at Long Beach Playhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcome to Theater News, a regular column by longtime reviewer Anita W. Harris. Look for it most Thursdays. Or\u00a0sign up<\/a>\u00a0for our Eat. See. Do. newsletter to get it in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine leaving your spouse with a slam of the door but then coming back knocking 15 years later with the divorce papers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the premise of Lucas Hnath\u2019s play \u201cA Doll\u2019s House, Part 2,\u201d which picks up from the end of Henrik Ibsen\u2019s 1879 \u201cA Doll\u2019s House\u201d in portraying what happens to Nora (and husband Torvald) after she suddenly leaves one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ibsen\u2019s play \u2014 beautifully enacted<\/a> last year at Long Beach Shakespeare Company \u2014 was considered sensational in its time for portraying a wife abandoning her husband and three children for reasons of her own fulfillment. And it isn\u2019t for another man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She simply realizes that she lives like a child in the \u201cdoll\u2019s house\u201d of her husband\u2019s home, and before that, her father\u2019s, and must leave to realize who she is as a person in her own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And how does that work out for her?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Link<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what playwright Hnath explores in his 2017 Tony Award-nominated \u201cA Doll\u2019s House, Part 2,\u201d opening this weekend at Long Beach Playhouse\u2019s upstairs Studio Theatre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNora isn\u2019t returning with hopes of reconciliation,\u201d says Sean Gray, the Playhouse\u2019s producing artistic director. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, after some economic hardship, Nora has become a successful feminist novelist. But she\u2019s in a legal bind after signing contracts in her own name as an unmarried woman even though still married to Torvald.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n