Writing Excerpts

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 writing reviews

And what a translation! Who would have thought Ibsen, the “father of modern drama,” who sometimes seems so antiquated today, could have his often stodgy dialogue turned into conversation that is poetic, passionate and contemporary, all at the same time?
—Paulanne Simmons, Curtain Up


The play’s director, Helene Kvale, has fashioned a version of the classic that deserves admiration and acknowledgment. The play’s translation verbally and stylistically works well, as the story takes place in what appears to be the 1950’s instead of the late 1800’s. In an era that in many ways infantilized women, the ’50’s attitudes and gender roles were just the spark it took to ignite the feminist movement, gaining benefits that so many of us now enjoy. —Loria Parker, Theaterscene.net


Any version of A Doll’s House has to make you feel that its subject is urgent and its world contemporary – and it has to achieve that without any sense of anachronism. Helene Kvale’s version makes Ibsen’s 129 year-old play feel like a play for today. —Richard Eyre


Helene Kvale’s new adaptation and translation of A Doll’s House is a daring, innovative and brilliant piece of work. It reverberates with breathtaking psychological tensions for which Ibsen was justly famous, but Kvale also succeeds in bringing out the timeless qualities of the play, showing that Helmer and Nora have something to say to everybody, everywhere. —Thomas Hylland Eriksen