IT’S 1879 IN Norway and with a proverbial ‘Crash! Boom! Bang!’ Nora Helmer walks out of her eight-year-long marriage to banker, Torvald. It’s a moment in theatre history, penned by Henrik Ibsen in A Doll’s House which shifts the world seismically, upending the value and permanence of the idea of marriage, scandalously, and asking difficult questions that will resonate forever. Contemporary playwright Lucas Hnath takes this moment as his starting point, asking what becomes of Nora, 15 years on. A Doll’s House Part 2, featuring Bianca Amato as Nora is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 7 June.

You don’t need to be an Ibsen buff to recognise the timeless universality of moral conflict in this astute and carefully constructed work. It’s a crisp and tight reflection on, not only, what it is to be a wife in 19th century Europe, but also what it is to be in a committed relationship at any time. What happens to the secret selfish you when you are with someone else, for better or for worse, till death do you part?

Or further, what it is to be damaged in a relationship that doesn’t look you in the eye or see you in entirety? Replete with important nuggets about the authenticity of being yourself in the world and how difficult that is, with all the bits and bobs of baggage that you accumulate along the way, from raising children to being crippled by guilt, it’s a witty and wise piece of theatre.

It’s also a work which gently and somewhat slyly tears ironic strips off earnest ideologues. Nora returns to Torvald (Zane Meas) out of the blue and in a bureaucratic fix which only he can put right. In her upholstery-like skirt and jacket, with her forthright gaze, she’s a very different person from the one who felt wronged by condescension and too much lovey-dovey patronising in her husband. It’s as much about the sexism of the society in which they live as it is about the broken ties Nora left in her wake. Each issue is held and explored with a voracity that makes you understand the viewpoint of each character.  

Amato is astonishingly fine onstage: she ages under your gaze as you experience her as the prodigal wife, a woman raised by her faithful servant Anne Marie (Charlotte Butler) and then as the mother of an adult daughter, Emmy (Simone Neethling). There is empathy and fierceness in the give and take between social values. Meas is splinteringly fine in his masculine vulnerability and sense of impotence with a softened reconciliation of the damage that mansplaining can bring.

With a bare set that speaks of 19th century values without any frills and period-evocative costume, the work is punctuated anachronistically with purple neon moments of scene change, but holds its own potently, over four clear acts. Along the lines of what Helen Moffett did in her novel Charlotte to the narrative of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or what Yael Farber did in her 2012 work Mies Julie to the fabric of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, A Doll’s House Part 2 comes with the kind of mindset that understands the great tomes of literature as stepping stones into new and different stories, which add nuance and poetry to well-heeled characters that society has loved and hated for decades.

A Doll’s House Part 2 is written by Lucas Hnath and directed by Barbara Rubin. Performed by Bianca Amato, Charlotte Butler, Zane Meas and Simone Neethling, it features design by Greg King (set);  Maritha Visagie (costumes); Franky Steyn (lighting); Kirsti Cumming (projection); and Neil Kuny (sound). It is co-produced by The Quickening and Daphne Kuhn and stage managed by Regina Dube assisted by Melidah Thakadu, with technical management by Loftus Mohale assisted by Reggie Mathebe. It is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 7 June 2025.