On the verge of the Tony Awards on June 11, Jackson McHenry sat down for lunch with the star of A Doll's House, Part 2... at a doll's house. He spoke with Laurie Metcalf about the most nominated play of the season, which has recently extended through January 7, 2018.
Most guests bring their own dolls to lunch at the American Girl Cafe in the American Girl store in midtown. But if you, like Laurie Metcalf (and me), arrive without a doll, smiling attendants in button-downs will let you choose from a diverse coterie of loaner figurines. As we’re shuffled in, Metcalf selects a blonde girl in a blue-and-teal dress and a pink ribbon. She names her Nora Helmer.
The name fits, if you think of Nora Helmer as the naïve young woman who leaves behind her family in Henrik Ibsen’s classic play A Doll’s House. The version of Nora that Metcalf is currently playing in Lucas Hnath’s sequel, A Doll’s House, Part 2, is nothing like the woman she used to be, let alone the blonde doll in the teal dress. Metcalf’s Nora storms back through the door she famously shut behind her 15 years earlier (by the play’s chronology), full of righteousness, and selfishly demanding that the people she abandoned do exactly what she requests... READ MORE