About the Play:

A Doll's House is a full-length drama by Henrik Ibsen, translated by Christopher Hampton. This 1879 masterpiece about Nora and Torvald Helmer's fragile marriage was a watershed moment in both theatre and feminism. As Christmas Eve approaches and purse strings tighten; the Helmer's discover that the façade of their perfect lives will crumble with the stroke of a pen. Seemingly carefree Nora must face the consequences of her darkest secret and the lies she told to save her husband's life. Written when he was 51, this is the play that made Henrik Ibsen internationally famous.

A Doll's House is Christopher Hampton's translation of Henrik Ibsen's classic play about Nora and Torvald Helmer's bankrupt marriage. This epochal drama of marriage and the individual portrays a controlling husband Torvald Helmer, a recently promoted bank manager, and his wife Nora, a submissive young woman who, when their idealized homelife collapses, comes to the realization that she must finally close the door on her husband, children, and life in "a doll's house" in order to find and live as her true self. The classic feminist play about a husband who treated his wife like a plaything to be wound up on demand and a who loves her husband so much that she committed forgery for him. Christopher Hampton adapts the play, but does not capitalize on its Feminist aspects; he doesn't have to, they are built in. A Doll's House is no mere social tract, but a quietly powerful and unsettling drama that strikes at the false heart of all relationships and situations based on condescension and inequality.

A Doll's House premiered in 1879 at the Royal Theatre in in Copenhagen, Denmark. This translation by British playwright Christopher Hampton, opened in 1971 on Broadway and ran for over a year at the Playhouse Theatre in New York City. Since then this vigorously modern translation enjoyed widespread international acceptance among leading theatres, and has become a popular choice for college and community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male and 2 children

What people say:

"Christopher Hampton's new adaptation has the freshness of a new play about it. ... The play is alive, it is true to its characters and situations, and it evokes a new Ibsen all the better for suggesting the theater rather than the study or schoolroom." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the second most widely produced dramatist in the world, eclipsed only by Shakespeare. He is revered in Norway as its most famous author and a national symbol, even though he spent much of his life abroad in Italy and Germany. He was largely responsible for the rise of realism in the theatre. In works that possess revelatory power Ibsen challenged his audiences to question conventional morality and social conditions. Often controversial, his works were deeply unsettling to many of his Victorian contemporaries. He is now widely regarded as the "father of modern drama" and one of the greatest dramatists who ever lived.

Christopher Hampton is a British playwright, screenwriter, director, producer, and a consummate translator and adaptor of novels. He is perhaps most famous for his play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos), which won an Olivier Award in 1986. He adapted the play for film and won an Oscar for the screenplay. His theatre work includes the stage adaptation of Sunset Boulevard for Andrew Lloyd Webber, which received Tony Awards for both Book and Lyrics. He has translated a wide range of works including classics by Chekhov, Ibsen and Moliere as well as contemporary plays by Yasmina Reza and Florian Zeller. His long list of screenplays includes A Doll's House, The Good Father, Total Eclipse, and The Quiet American.