'A Doll's House, Part 2' at Pasadena Playhouse: A woman walks out on her husband and child, and then ...

Mom walks retired connected hubby and child, and past ...

Actors Elizabeth Reaser and Jason Butler Harner person known each different since a accidental gathering astatine the borderline of a softball tract successful Central Park successful the precocious ’90s. She was astatine Juilliard, and helium was successful postgraduate schoolhouse astatine New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The brace stood by a obstruction watching their chap students play, having nary volition of joining the crippled themselves.

Harner recalls Reaser was a peculiarly potent operation of funny, irreverent, self-effacing and beautiful. As they chatted helium thought, “Oh, this is gonna beryllium fun!”

More than 2 decades later, they are moving unneurotic for the archetypal time, playing estranged Victorian mates Nora and Torvald successful Lucas Hnath’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” opening Sunday astatine Pasadena Playhouse.

Director Jennifer Chang toyed with the thought of casting an existent joined mates successful the roles, but erstwhile she witnessed the chemistry betwixt Reaser and Harner, she knew she had made the close choice. It whitethorn dependable counterintuitive — due to the fact that the play is simply a play tackling themes of class, feminism and parental and filial obligations — but Reaser and Harner’s superpower is their quality to laughter together.

“It’s amusive to enactment with Jason due to the fact that he’s hysterically funny, and I’m a whore for anyone who’s funny,” Reaser says with a wide smile. “You could beryllium the meanest idiosyncratic connected the planet, but if you’re funny, I don’t care. This is my failing arsenic a quality being.”

Actors Elizabeth Reaser and Jason Butler Harner are co-leads successful “A Doll’s House, Part 2” astatine the Pasadena Playhouse.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Reaser’s laughter erupts without warning, large and large similar a thunderclap; Harner’s is arsenic boisterous. During a caller greeting rehearsal the 2 laughed often and the effect was infectious. There was a lightness to the proceedings that belied the seriousness of the issues arising arsenic they practiced the play’s last scene.

“A Doll’s House, Part 2” picks up 15 years aft the events of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 classic. Ibsen’s revolutionary publication ends with the wife, Nora, walking retired connected her husband, Torvald, and their girl successful bid to observe her afloat imaginable arsenic a quality being. Hnath’s sequel begins with Nora’s return. The assemblage learns what she’s been up to each those years, and besides what she plans to bash now.

The razor-sharp dialog is rapid-fire, and due transportation requires a keen knowing of the quality and nuance of language. Reaser and Harner person the lines mostly down pat. What they are moving connected during this peculiar rehearsal is the minutiae of the blocking. Detailed discussions unfold with Chang astir an overturned chair, the placement of a booklet onstage, and erstwhile and however Nora grabs her purse disconnected a broadside array by the door.

After an aggravated back-and-forth betwixt the mates portion they are seated connected the floor, Chang asks Harner, “Should you assistance her up?”

“I thought astir it, but past I thought she wouldn’t similar that,” Harner says of Nora, who is precise overmuch her ain pistillate astatine this point.

She is, however, going to beryllium wearing uncomfortable shoes, a ample skirt and a corset, Chang offers.

“Maybe we tin marque a infinitesimal of it?” she adds.

Harner considers this, twisting the hairsbreadth down his close receptor with his close manus arsenic helium talks. They sermon the meaning down Nora’s words astatine that peculiar bushed successful the publication — and their interaction connected Torvald. Eventually it is decided that Harner volition connection her his hand, and she volition hesitantly instrumentality it. They signifier the country implicit and implicit again — each clip with a antithetic effect. It’s a maestro people successful the specificity of acting for the stage.

Harner revels successful this work, having started his vocation onstage earlier achieving occurrence arsenic a surface histrion — astir notably arsenic FBI Special Agent Roy Petty successful “Ozark,” arsenic good arsenic successful “Fringe,” “The Walking Dead” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

“I virtually could commencement crying close now, due to the fact that I miss the theatre truthful much,” Harner says during an interrogation successful Pasadena Playhouse’s cozy subterranean greenroom. “It’s important to me. I consciousness similar I’m a amended histrion erstwhile I enactment onstage.”

Elizabeth Reaser and Jason Butler Harner, who prima arsenic Nora and Torvald successful “A Doll’s House, Part 2” astatine Pasadena Playhouse.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Reaser has an arsenic awesome surface résumé, including the “Twilight” films arsenic good arsenic “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Good Wife” and “The Haunting of Hill House.” Her signifier acquisition is not arsenic heavy arsenic Harner’s, and for the longest clip she thought she couldn’t perchance bash different play, calling the process “too psychotic.” Nonetheless, she precocious told her hubby that she thought she was acceptable and that she’d peculiarly similar to enactment astatine Pasadena Playhouse.

Three months aboriginal she got “this random telephone retired of nowhere.” It was meant to be.

Harner soon texted her, penning cheekily, “We’re excessively young, right?”

Reaser didn’t cognize Harner had been formed arsenic Torvald.

“I was like, ‘Well, who’s playing the Nora?’ Because if you don’t person a bully Nora, I don’t privation to bash it,” Harner says.

“A Doll’s House, Part 2” opened connected Broadway successful 2017, notes Chang — earlier a planetary pandemic, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade and the opening of President Trump’s 2nd term. In immoderate ways, she says, the play is much applicable than ever.

“Reading it now, I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is not the play that I remembered,’” she says, adding that discourse is everything erstwhile it comes to interacting with art. “I’m astir apt not the idiosyncratic present that I was then.”

Reaser and Harner are likewise primed to present the amusement successful the discourse of determination Los Angeles theatre successful 2025.

“The archetypal play is inactive revolutionary,” says Reaser. “The thought of leaving your children is inactive a shocking, extremist thing.”

What Hnath did successful picking up and reexamining this root material, Harner says, was a singular enactment of harnessing that complexity.

“It’s astir patriarchy and misogyny, and obviously, primarily, astir a pistillate discovering her voice,” helium says. “But it’s besides astir 2 radical — a mates — who, successful 1 mentation of themselves, truly did emotion each other.”