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| Holly Twyford and Craig Wallace in A Doll's House, Part 2. Round House Theatre via Facebook. |
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| Love's Labor's Lost set designed by Lee Savage for Folger Theatre |
Both stories conclude that love is harder than it looks, no matter how agile your language skills are. Language requires communication skills, which are broader than the leaps over furniture Nora (Holly Twyford) effects in her abandoned Doll House. (Here, I go by the Signet Classics paperback edition, which eschews punctuation and possessiveness in titling Ibsen's play A Doll House rather than the more common A Doll's House. Signet also eschewed the hyphen in Moby Dick. What can I say.)
What the stories demonstrate is that true love requires respect, and respect comes from (and with) honest communication. Nora and Torvald traveled that road (with injuries) after Ibsen's story ends and Lucas Hnath's continuation completes. And Shakespeare broke the rules of Comedy by bringing this revelation about honesty and respect to his heroes and heroines without joining them in a four-way wedding at the end of the story (or five if you count Don Armado and Jaquenetta, which you should). I almost want to see Love's Labor's Lost, Part 2 after the four principal couples reunite a year and a day hence to see if respect conquers all after all. It didn't in Nora and Torvald's case.
As for the theater-going experience, I saw both shows in matinee mode, which I've been told doesn't bring out the best in either performers or audiences. I've always disagreed with that and have rarely been disappointed. I'm far more awake in matinees than evening performances, and I've never discerned a lack of energy in matinee performers.
That said, I'll say I appreciated DH2 but loved LLL. For some reason, I was expecting more comedy (though not necessarily Comedy) from DH2 than was there. As a modern take on Ibsen that wasn't reflected in the set (a broken home), the production added language (vernacular; i.e., vocabulary; i.e., dirty words) I didn't expect and didn't appreciate. It wasn't clever, to my mind and sensibility.
The DH2 set was devoid of a home's warmth, which I suspect was the point but made for a somewhat lifeless experience. On the other hand, this allowed the focus to be on the character's speeches, which indeed were speeches rather than dialogue (mutually respectful communication).
In contrast, the LLL set, a sumptuous library (with a hidden bar behind the books), provided an idealized world for would-be academics showing off their erudition and sophistication.
For both DH2 and LLL, the delight is in the performances. I am in awe of actors, and the direction guided their performances to perfection. Round House is always full of favorites, and the cast of four--Twyford, Craig Wallace (Torvald), Nancy Robinette (housekeeper Anne Marie), and Kathryn Tkel (Nora and Torvald's daughter Emmy) all are RHT alumni. I always look forward to actors I consider familiar friends. Over at LLL, that familiar friend was Eric Hissom as the ridiculous Don Armado (I'm reminded of the Adolpho character in The Drowsy Chaperone). Other standouts in the cast were Zachary Fine as a virile yet ultimately humble Berowne and Megan Graves as an adorably impish Mote.
Love, hosaa
Respect's labor's found
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