IS A NATURALIST STAGING STYLE AND PROSCENIUM ARCH STAGE THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY OF STAGING A
... The aim of this essay is to discuss weather a naturalistic staging style and proscenium arch stage are the most effective way of staging ‘A Doll’s House’. ... (Ibid: xxiv) Furthermore, its realism is emphasized by the simplicity of the language which lacks of the pompous and melodramatic style used in plays of the nineteen century and by the meticulous description of the stage setting Ibsen provide (Ibid). To develop the play in such a short period of time, Ibsen employs what is called ‘retrospective method of situation and character delineation’ (ibid: xxv); precisely, instead of presenting all the events on stage, he begins his narration just before the clue event is due to happen and uses dialogs to illustrate those events that have occurred in the past: “the action is concentrated into a very small space of time and the sins of the past are contrasted violently with the calm and comfort of the present, which are swiftly destroyed as retribution approaches. ... Early productions of ‘A Doll’s House’ are characterized by a naturalistic stage setting: extremely realistic, mostly following Ibsen’s directions, with the addiction of some new details; the production of 1879 is a good example: there were flowering plants and flowered seat covers: “all of which conveyed an air of middle class refinement in the Helmer household” (Tornqvist, 1998:66); above the piano there was a reproduction of Raphael’s ‘Madonna with a child’ and among the book was visible a bust of Venus: by those visual signifiers the director departed from Ibsen and from the very beginning indicated Helmer’s adherence to Nora socially determined triple role of sexual object, ‘virgin’ and mother”. ... Despite the grate accuracy with which Ibsen described the stage setting “ almost all of his directions…can be transposed in audio visual stage signs” (ibid). ... Their point of view, which lead them to use an expressionistic style, is that despite ‘its apparent social reality’ (Ibid) the play strikes more like a nightmare than like a piece of naturalism (Ibid). ... theatre, 2000) The stage, in this singular production, is quite minimalist: a great number of furniture, described in Ibsen’s stage direction is missing; the front door is directly visible and in the extremes of the stage it is possible to see the two side rooms.