Across the many great works of theatre in the literary canon, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House possesses an iconic ending scene that ranks among the very best, with a door slamming shut as protagonist Nora Helmer walks away from her husband and children, choosing herself over the constraints of 19th-century domesticity. But what happens to those left behind after that exit? What does it mean to walk away from a life and try to build a new one? And what happens when the past refuses to stay in the past?

Answering that hypothetical question is American playwright Lucas Hnath, whose 2017 play A Doll’s House, Part 2 provides both a continuation and confrontation of those unresolved issues. Critically acclaimed and commercially well-received, the play is a tightly wound, 90-minute response that picks up fifteen years later, with Nora returning—not because she wants to, but because she has to, promising both high-stakes drama alongside a healthy dose of comedy. And while it contains the promise of being a sequel in its title, local theatre company Pangdemonium, who are staging it this March, reassure that it works even if you’ve never encountered Ibsen’s original in any form, and is catered towards a modern audience while staying firmly within its Norwegian setting.

“Think of it like if you watched Prometheus before watching Alien,” director Timothy Koh says, using another analogy. “You’ll get more if you know the original, but it still works completely as a standalone piece. You can watch it and understand perfectly well what’s happening, just that if you know everything that came before, you get a few references and Easter eggs here and there.”

The play is described as a ‘dramedy’ by director Timothy Koh, which might sound like a contradiction, but in reality, it’s one of the most natural ways to tell a story. Life rarely fits neatly into one category; the most serious conversations can be undercut by an unexpected moment of humor, just as laughter can sometimes mask deeper tensions. A Doll’s House, Part 2 thrives on this delicate balance, where it proves itself sharp and biting, while still filled with moments of levity that catch you off guard. But even underneath the humour, there’s always something simmering, waiting to reveal some hard truth about human nature, as the characters provoke, deflect and scratch at the scars of long-buried wounds.

Director Timothy Koh describes it as a “mind game” between the characters, with dark moments where it feels the fragility of everything is coming apart, before it’s undercut by a surprise moment of laughter that both halts the tension and at times makes it even more unsettling. That push and pull is what makes A Doll’s House, Part 2 such a gripping watch—there’s no clear line between tension and release, just the natural rhythm of human relationships playing out in real time.

Of course, A Doll’s House, Part 2 works on its own as a standalone piece, expanding on the original ideas of Ibsen without necessitating a complete idea of the previous play. Where Ibsen’s original was about breaking out of the mold of marriage and societal expectations, Hnath’s sequel is about the consequences of that decision—not just for Nora, but for those she left behind. It’s a play that doesn’t simply ask whether she was right to leave; it asks what it costs to truly be free, and whether you can ever fully escape these social structures you were once part of.

As a dramedy, balancing comedy and drama is no easy feat, but A Doll’s House, Part 2 walks that tightrope masterfully. It’s razor-sharp and darkly funny, filled with moments of levity that cut through the tension, but the weight of what’s at stake is always present. While Nora comes back guns blazing, she soon finds herself under brutal interrogation by the others in the house, where the exchanges become a game of wits—characters circling one another, testing each other’s resolve, trying to gain the upper hand in an emotional battle that unfolds in real time.

According to Koh and the cast, this is a play that embroils both the actors and the audience in a sharp battle of words and mind games, with a bleak sense of darkness always creeping at the edges and where it feels everything is coming apart, before being punctuated by sudden turns into comedy, somehow making the situation all the more unsettling. Says Neo Swee Lin, who plays Nora’s former maid Anne Marie, describes it as an immense challenge. “It’s a very, very difficult show,” she says. “There’s nowhere to hide, and the conversations are continuous. You don’t get to step offstage and take a breath before you complete these very intense scenes, you just have to keep going.”

Yet the cast is up for it, and are confident that their rehearsals will pay off. Among the cast is veteran Malaysian thespian Jo Kukathas, who plays the lead role of Nora, alongside Lim Kay Siu as Nora’s ex-husband Torvald, and Rebecca Ashley Dass as Nora’s daughter Emmy. Jo, in playing Nora, remains onstage for almost the entire performance, while Kay Siu, as Torvald, spends much of his time in long conversations with Kukathas, his character’s simmering resentment and unresolved misogyny surfacing in more aggressive ways as the play unfolds. Moreover, it’s a play that forces its actors to bare themselves emotionally, with little to lean on besides the text itself, and to really come to grips with the way they bring their own experiences to their portrayals.

“I don’t think Torvald himself knows he is a misogynist, and imagines that his behaviour is normal. And that’s something that in our society today, men are not called out on, and they continue to show ignorance, a total lack of awareness and remain in denial,’ muses Kay Siu. “I think that it’s good that all the men in the audience might be prompted to ask themselves: “Wait a minute… am I a misogynist?’

There’s something uniquely intimate about A Doll’s House, Part 2. It’s not just that the audience is drawn into these intense, one-on-one confrontations—it’s also that the actors are playing versions of people they know, or even versions of themselves. “This is the kind of play where you can’t really fake it,” Kukathas says. “You’re not playing some grand, theatrical version of a character. You’re playing real people with real pain and real regrets.”

That level of authenticity is what makes the play so gripping. Every line, every pause, every unspoken hesitation carries weight. Swee Lin and Kay Siu, who are a married couple in real life, promise to bring a lived-in chemistry to their performances. Kukathas, single in contrast to her co-stars’ long-term relationship, channels that into Nora, a woman who has chosen to exist against societal expectation, but now faces the repercussions of that choice. The piece then essentially holds up a mirror to both society and ourselves, forcing us to reflect on how these issues happen to the real people we know, the choices we make with real consequences, and the things we say (or don’t) to the ones we love for the sake of keeping up appearances.

“I think in the original A Doll’s House, it isn’t so much that Nora is triumphant so much as that she makes the decision to leave. I don’t think she saw it as a victory, but more of a difficult necessity,” says Kukathas. “What we don’t see is the repercussions of her decision to leave. In Part 2 we find out what happened to her, the repercussions of her leaving and now – very excitingly – the reason for her decision to come back to this house.”

For Timothy Koh, A Doll’s House, Part 2 is a natural addition to his growing body of work with Pangdemonium. Over the years, he’s developed a reputation for handling dialogue-heavy, character-driven pieces with a level of precision and depth that few can match. His past productions—Doubt – A Parable, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Muswell Hill—all share a common thread: the ability to turn conversation into something dynamic and dramatic, with tension in the room that could cut a knife as the characters engage in verbal sparring matches. “This kind of theatre is tough,” Koh admits. “There’s no spectacle to distract the audience, no elaborate sets to hide behind. It’s just actors, words, and the raw emotions they bring to the stage.”

That minimalism is, in many ways, what makes the play so demanding. There are no big set changes, no elaborate props—just the characters in a room, taking turns to dish their burdens and take it out on each other for great lengths of time. In the stripped down setting, the actors are forced to be completely present in the moment. “The challenge is that there’s very little to hold onto physically,” Koh explains. “You’re not relying on movement or big stage pictures. You’re relying on what’s happening between the actors, on what’s not being said as much as what is.”

That kind of restraint is what makes the play so powerful. Every shift in tone, every flicker of doubt or defiance, becomes magnified in a piece of theatre in its purest form—intimate, immediate, and emotionally raw, and a task that Koh fully dedicates himself to; in the rehearsal room where we’re holding this interview, everything has been marked out on the floor, and despite his great reverence for the Broadway version he watched all those years ago, is determined to make it his own by adding his signature director’s touch to it.

At its core, A Doll’s House, Part 2 isn’t about tying things up with a neat bow. It’s not interested in telling the audience who was right or wrong. Instead, it lets the audience wrestle with those questions themselves. Nora leaves, but what’s really changed? That is the core question that the team hopes will lingers long after the final bow, to challenge and provoke audiences, and in doing so, continue the conversation that Ibsen started all those years ago, proving that some doors, no matter how firmly they are shut, are never fully closed. “I think audiences will recognise themselves in the piece – it’s ultimately a very complex look at human relationships we all have. It challenges us to think deeply about our relationships, marriages, and family,” concludes Koh.

Photo Credits: CRISPI

A Doll’s House, Part 2 runs from 7th to 23rd March 2025 at Victoria Theatre. Tickets available here