Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Heather Raffo’s NOURA is an intelligent, absorbing contemporary riff on Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”

• By drediman
• December 12, 2018
• No Comments

Heather Raffo and Nabil Elouahabi in Ms. Raffo’s “Noura” Playwrights Horizons. Photo by Joan Marcus.

This week, Heather Raffo’s intelligent and absorbing new play Noura opened Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. The play was first seen as part of Women’s Voices Theater Festival, the excellent annual Washington, D.C.-area theater festival focused on mounting works by women playwrights (Noura premiered at the Shakespeare Theatre Company). Set in present-day New York on Christmas Eve, Ms. Raffo’s play is a contemporary riff on Ibsen’s trailblazing A Doll’s House. It tells the story of an Iraqi-American woman as she attempts to reconcile and prioritize her numerous identities – mother, refugee, Iraqi, American, lover, wife, career woman.

Ms. Raffo has written a play with such a deep well of complex shades of feeling that it’s a shame that it comes up just short of true greatness. First the good news. Although it’s based on A Doll’s House, it’s very much it’s own creation. Unlike the scheming, even cowardly, Nora of the Ibsen classic, the title character of Noura is a woman great passion and conviction throughout. The way she reacts to the realities of life thrown at her is an unpredictable (a huge compliment) mind-racing spectacle all on its own. However, some of the play seems underdeveloped; this is one play that would have benefited from a meaty two acts (the Playwrights Horizons production runs a compact 90 minutes without an intermission).

That the production is as successful as it is a testament to the extent to which both Ms. Raffo (as a performer) and director Joanna Settle trust the play. Ms. Settle’s direction has a hushed but laser-like intensity that feels at home with the play’s tug-of-war emotions. Her work feels neither histrionic nor didactic in any way. In the restless title role, Ms. Raffo is simply astonishing. She breathes such comprehensive and intense life into Noura that she becomes one with the character. Her transparent performance affects the work of her fellow actors, each of whom turn in exceptionally rich portrayals.

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NOURA
Off-Broadway, Play
Playwrights Horizons
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 30