THUNDERCLAP

By Richard Zoglin

Great performances have been easier to find than great plays on Broadway this season. Michael Gambon, making his U.S. stage debut last fall, stormed impressively through Skylight, a lesser work by David Hare. Antony Sher's luminous portrayal of English painter Stanley Spencer makes Pam Gems' Stanley look better than it probably is. Christopher Plummer is currently having a high old time impersonating the boozing thespian John Barrymore, though the vehicle, Barrymore, is little more than a facile stand-up monologue.

Janet McTeer, the latest Brit sensation to make her Broadway debut, has the advantage of bringing along a play really worthy of her talents. Ibsen's A Doll's House might seem an obvious war-horse for an actress looking to make her mark. But McTeer turns Nora's famous feminist self-affirmation into more than just a political tract. This is a revelatory performance, the kind that takes a familiar play, gives it a hard shake and makes us experience it anew.

McTeer (who has done Shakespeare and Chekhov on the London stage and has played Vita Sackville-West in PBS's Portrait of a Marriage) is a tall, imposing-looking blond, which makes her wifely submissiveness early in the play all the more grotesque. Flapping her hands and giggling nervously, she is hardly able to contain her energy--and, indeed, seems ready to fly apart as an old transgression (she once forged a signature to acquire a loan) threatens to unravel her pat little marriage. Yet a freezing calm overtakes her in the final confrontation with her husband Torvald, in which McTeer (helped by Frank McGuinness's vigorous translation) stunningly conveys a woman whose eyes--and mind--are suddenly opening. "No man sacrifices his integrity for the person he loves," protests Torvald, after Nora says she expected him to take the blame if her past sin were revealed. "Hundreds of thousands of women have!" she replies in a fierce half whisper that has the clarity of a thunderclap.

Director Anthony Page doesn't allow McTeer's virtuoso turn to overshadow a fine supporting cast, particularly Owen Teale (who also appeared in the London production) as Torvald. He's uptight and patronizing but far from a foolish figure. When he stands alone after Nora leaves, we feel the full impact of the play's emotionally complex climax: both triumph (a woman freed) and tragedy (a family broken), a cause for cheers and for weeping. Most theatergoers will simply let out a slow exhale, after an evening that takes the breath away.

--By Richard Zoglin