The frenetic Broadway spring comes to a thrilling conclusion with the lightning-bolt opening of Lucas Hnath’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” a new play so endlessly stimulating that it could give audiences fodder for heated conversation until the fall season is in full swing.
The commercial theater, or for that matter the non-commercial theater, does not regularly present us with new plays of ideas — let alone comedies of ideas. Hnath’s play fairly sets your head spinning with its knotty perspectives. Each scene in this whiplash-inducing (in a good way) play flashes forth a new revelation to absorb and process, although it has only four characters — and, yes, they are all essentially holdovers from the 1879 Ibsen play that Hnath is both honoring and interrogating.
