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| Cherdonna's Doll's House (Jeff Carpenter) |
Cherdonna’s Doll’s
House
Washington Ensemble Theatre
Through May 15, 2017
Cherdonna Shinatra
is a unique presence on the Seattle arts scene. She is the creation of
performer Jody Kuehner who was
awarded one of The Stranger’s Genius Awards in 2015. She might be described as
a clown dancer. Her lithe body is ready to contort into many a dance move as
her performance entity enlarges and amplifies her feelings.
She has teamed up with Washington Ensemble Theatre and Ali Mohamed el-Gasseir to create a
unique experience of the Henrik Ibsen play, A
Doll’s House. There are so many aspects of this evening that are intriguing
and beguiling, at least from the beginning on toward the end.
Cherdonna begins by introducing us to what apparently is one
of her favorite theater pieces, A Doll’s House. She talks to the audience
members and shows us parts of the set and a great big pink chair that is quite
apparently “hers.” She doesn’t really tell us why this piece is so important to
her, but we just accept that it clearly is.
In a way, it’s like a doll’s house that Cherdonna is playing
with – and that is likely a large part of the intent of combining these two
entities together. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
is considered one of the most famous early feminist plays, even if Ibsen
himself did not necessary consider himself a feminist.
The character Nora Helmer has done something considered
illegal and quite scandalous in her time: in order to help her husband during a
time of great illness, she takes out a bank loan fraudulently, which works to
help him back to health. However, she could not tell him that truth. The threat
of that action becoming known might undo everything in her life – her marriage,
her standing in society, her ability to parent her children.
As the action of the play progresses, she realizes that she
has been treated as a doll, from the time growing up in her father’s home
through her entire marriage. She’s also participated in her own infantilization
and treated parenting as if her children and her life were playing in a doll’s
house. She determines that she cannot stay in this doll house if she wants to
become her real adult self, and must leave.
In this iteration, the full cast of the Ibsen play is present and whole segments of
the actual script are fitfully performed until or unless Cherdonna interferes
either because she’s so enthusiastic or she wants something else to happen.
Some of that interruption is very, very funny.
It would be unfair to describe a lot of what Cherdonna does
because a) it might be somewhat improvisational and depend on the night, and b)
it is so much more fun to experience it for yourself without any spoilers.
Leah Salcido Pfenning
as Nora and Samie Spring Detzer as
Mrs. Linde interact with Cherdonna the most. Nora gets the most annoyed and
Mrs. Linde finds her hysterically funny. The other characters fall somewhere in
the range. Sally Brady as the Nanny
gets a lot of deadpan reaction time to good effect.
The event – it’s hard to call it a play because it’s more of
a deconstruction of one than one itself – falls apart when it tries to present
the serious apex of the Ibsen play straight through. Cherdonna has had her
feelings hurt and she leaves and the play is allowed to continue without the
interruptions.
Unfortunately, it does not work to try to stick a serious
ending on to the deconstructed and very funny first 3/4s as if to make a “real” point.
The actors try to present the play truthfully, but it simply isn’t the time for
it. It might be that somehow Cherdonna is trying to find her “real” self, too,
but that conceptual “device” falls flat here.
By the end, it feels like an experiment gone wrong. However,
the first 3/4s are so much fun that I really heartily recommend you see it.
Because that part really is genius, and if you don’t go, you’ll miss that. Creators el-Gasseir/Kuehner should never have allowed Cherdonna to leave
the stage.
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