A Doll's House on Broadway Starring Jessica Chastain Tickets

By: Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Amy Herzog
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Choreography: Jennifer Rias
Cast list: Jessica Chastain (as Nora Helmer), Arian Moayed (as Torvald Helmer), Jesmille Darbouze (as Kristine Linde), Tasha Lawrence (as Anne-Marie), Michael Patrick Thornton (as Dr. Rank), Okieriete Onaodowan (as Nils Krogstad)
Design: Soutra Gilmour
Costumes: Soutra Gilmour and Enver Chakartash
Lighting: Jon Clark
Sound: Ben and Max Ringham
Other info: Original music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto

Since its premiere in 1879, A Doll's House has become a theatrical classic that gets frequent revivals all over the world. Its themes — including the flipping of traditional gender roles and the need for autonomy, even within a relationship — remain timeless.

Chastain is the latest of many celebrated actresses to play Nora since A Doll's House premiered. This play is her second Broadway outing, after 2012's The Heiress, but Chastain is best known for her films. She won her first Oscar in 2022 for starring in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and her other best-known work includes her Academy Award-nominated performances in Zero Dark Thirty and The Help.

Herzog adapts Ibsen's script for this A Doll's House Broadway revival. She's best known for the play 4000 Miles, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013 and won the Obie Award for Best New American Play in 2012. Her version of A Doll's House is described as “freshly relevant” for today, but further details have yet to be revealed.

Director Jamie Lloyd brings his vision for A Doll’s House to Broadway for the first time. (The production was supposed to premiere with Chastain in London's West End.) The show marks Lloyd’s second Broadway credit following Betrayal, starring Tom Hiddleston, in 2019. He is known for modern stagings of classic works, with minimalist and experimental staging — most recently, he brought such a revival of Cyrano de Bergerac, starring James McAvoy, off Broadway in 2022.

What to Watch For

• Ibsen wrote the play in Danish, and its original title is Et dukkehjem. A Doll's House is the most common translation, though some American scholars translate it as A Doll House since "dollhouse" is a common word here.
• A Doll's House has inspired countless other pieces of film, TV, literature, dance, and theatre. A popular recent example is Lucas Hnath's A Doll's House, Part 2, which sees Nora return to her home 15 years after leaving. The show premiered on Broadway in 2017 and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.
• A Doll's House has had 13 previous Broadway productions, though some were limited presentations. The longest span between revivals was 33 years, between 1938 and 1971. (The gap between this revival and the most recent, in 1997, comes in second at 26 years.)
• A Doll's House was the most-performed play in the world in 2006, the 100-year anniversary of when Ibsen died.
• Ibsen's play challenged gender norms, and it was so controversial in its time that he had to write an alternate ending, in which Nora returns to her children, in order to even get the play produced.
• Ibsen loosely based Nora and Torvald on his friend Laura Kieler and her husband Victor. Like Nora, Laura illegally signed off on a loan for her husband's medical care.