Waiting for Nora

www.jonathankalb.com: Stripped-down productions of classics are pretty familiar to New York theatergoers. We’ve had Ivo van Hove’s provocatively barebones O’Neill, Williams, and Moliere at New York Theater Workshop; Tea Alagić’s sleekly distilled Romeo and Juliet at Classic Stage Company; Fiasco Theater’s cleverly compressed Into the Woods at the Laura Pels; and many more. I even remember a literally stripped Naked Macbeth at the Sonnet Theater. Any seasoned theater fan expects such experimentation, even honors it, in our small and noncommercial venues, but Broadway is a tougher sell. It takes a special sort of chutzpah to be severely Spartan where orchestra seats run north of $300.