A doll’s house
Everyman Theatre, Baltimore MD Director Joanie Schultz Scenic Design Chelsea M. Warren Costume Design David Burdick Lighting Design Aja M. Jackson Sound Design T. Carlis Roberts Production Photography Kiirstn Pagan for Everyman Theatre
critical response below
Broadway World, A Challenging DOLL'S HOUSE at Everyman Theatre, Jack L.B. Gohn: “I noticed, and perhaps the audience was intended to notice, that the impressive set (by Chelsea Warren in an apparent local debut) doubles down on the doll’s house metaphor. The living room where everything takes place departs from Ibsen’s stage directions which locate the front door elsewhere in the house; in this set, the front door sits right in the middle of the back wall. And what a door! It is huge and out of human scale. The characters all look like dolls next to it, as well as next to the wall hanging that abuts it on both flanks. The world that the door lets out into is perpetually a bleak, dark midwinter night. The home, then, is made to feel as if it is the place that succors life from the threat of a forbidding world that starts right at the door’s frame. Perhaps this bit of design conveys as well that the house is a safe haven – but a fragile one, as a surprise stage effect I shall not describe effectively conveys its frangibility. I assume that the subliminal message was that Nora’s sortie into the world outside at the end is a step into bleakness and risk, as well as freedom and a larger-scale world.”