I can’t watch this play from a distance as a modern woman—it’s impossible. Katie Holmes gave an extraordinary haunting performance. She portrayed, with remarkable clarity, the reality of being a thinkingw oman whose abilities had no room to fully exist in the 19th century. Nora’s struggle is not confined to that era alone. What Ibsen exposed carried into the 20th century, and many would argue it still resonates in the 21st. After the performance, I overheard a woman say that Nora “wanted to be a man.” That interpretation misses the point entirely— Nora doesn’t want to be a man. She wants to be a complete human being. The tragedy is that in the 19th century, the only roles available to women were narrow, restrictive, and infantilizing. Her frustration comes from being forced to live within those limits, not from a desire to cross into masculinity. This production makes that truth impossible to ignore. It’s unsettling, resonant, and still urgently relevant—exactly as Ibsen intended.