Hailey Gillis and Gray Powell in A Doll’s House | Photo by Dahlia Katz
Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life, but it would be a shame to miss this rather short run. The Canadian Stage production of A Doll’s House is so refined and sumptuous, holds such insistent purpose, it’s rather astonishing to witness the breezy authenticity of its unfolding human drama. And I loved every damn second of it.
This adaptation of Ibsen’s classic isn’t one of those contemporary re-tellings and thank goodness, because, honestly, I’ve grown weary of such ventures. While common humanity can be a through-line across eras and culture, some stories lose their weight and credibility out of context. Amy Herzog’s version is set quite distinctly in-period (late 19th century), but she’s tightened it up considerably and provided some updated language.
From the moment she bounds onto the scene with her recently purchased Christmas gifts, Hailey Gillis’ Nora is startling. Her giddy and impulsive demeanour marks her as childlike, a mode of being that plays right into her husband Torvald’s (Gray Powell) patronizing attitude towards her. While he still refers to her as his “little songbird,” Herzog has toned down both the bird imagery and Torvald’s infantilization of Nora, allowing Powell to make him considerably more sympathetic to a modern audience.
When she finally leaves, a simultaneously empowering and devastating final gesture, we feel for him, recognize his genuine distress and bewilderment. That scene—where she sits him down as if he were the child, gentle yet firm, to reckon with their flawed union—is both exhilarating and eerie.
It is also the inevitable, sobering conclusion to Gillis’ portrait. Having gone from willful and extravagant frivolity, through agonized worry and then full-on panic as the facade of her life trembles and cracks, she finally arrives at a mature and self-assured course of action. It’s a stunning progression and Gillis embodies it with elegance and vulnerability. She also maintains an endearing aura that softens Nora’s less appealing qualities—her self-absorption and sense of entitlement—without obscuring them.
One of the many glorious, stylistic flourishes of director Brendan Healy’s staging are the huge shadows cast by Nora and Torvald from old-fashioned footlights, meta-theatrically expressing the magnitude of this intimate final scene. Another striking example, completed by Kevin Lamotte’s textured lighting, is the way Nora steps out from the gilded frame of the proscenium to gaze wistfully at the house, beginning to recognize that she and it are playthings.
As with Healy’s production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, another domestic dystopia, he’s scaled the mise en scène up to fill the massive Bluma Apel stage. Where I found the operatic gestalt alienating there, Gillian Gallow’s vast set works exceptionally well here. A forced perspective corner of a grand, luxurious living room, the walls here are represented by an expanse of red velvet drapery which extends up into the rafters. The artifice is deliberate, resonant and oppressive. The gently falling snow outside the window, a lovely and understated practical effect, provides atmosphere and offsets the intense stylization.
The draperies are echoed in the red curtains drawn together to obscure the stage during protracted scene transitions. Far from being mundane, these sequences, accompanied by Deanna H. Choi’s ominous music and chilling winter wind, heighten the drama and anticipation. Never before have I found a red curtain so charged and compelling!
Of the solid supporting players, each of whom grounds the action of the play with truth and humour, I was especially captivated by Jamie Robinson’s Krogstad, the man from whom Nora illegally (for a woman of the time) borrows money without her husband’s consent. Threatening her exposure for his own ends, he is Nora’s main antagonist, though not a villain. His plight is genuinely heartbreaking. Even in his abject position, Robinson affords him a quiet dignity I found deeply poignant.
I’m not sure if this was Herzog’s contribution or a quirk of Healy’s staging, but I found Nora’s game of hide and seek with her children such a quick yet inspired bit of lunacy. Instead of hiding under the table (as she does in the original), she drapes herself over the top to play dead in front of her momentarily panicked children. It’s such an unhinged bit of whimsy, so spontaneous and bizarre, that it caught be off guard. Hilarious, yes, but also an uncomfortable foreshadowing of her dark thoughts to come.
Anyway, this is a stunner.
A Doll’s House
January 17 to February 1, 2026
Bluma Appel Theatre
(27 Front Street East)
90 minutes
Hailey Gillis and Laura Condlin in A Doll’s House | Photo by Dahlia Katz