INTERLOCHEN, Mich.–It has been more than 140 years since Nora slammed the door on her husband and three children, walking out of her married life in Henrik Ibsen’s proto-feminist masterpiece A Doll’s House. But now she’s back in Lucas Hnath’s critically-acclaimed and Tony Award-winning A Doll’s House, Part 2.

The audacity of penning a sequel to Ibsen’s classic is admirable, even more so for its tremendous successes, and it was begging to be done, really. Whatever happened to Nora? At turns tremendously thoughtful, wickedly sharp, and funny, the 2017 play, currently being produced as part of Interlochen’s Shakespeare Festival, boldly answers that question while also raising anew the very Victorian “Woman Question” in a way that makes contemporary audiences question themselves in perplexing and insightful ways.

In this four-person play of tightly-crafted, mostly two-person scenes, Nora confronts her husband Torvald, her daughter Emmy, and Anne Marie, the woman who raised her as well as the three children she left behind fifteen years before. Or rather, they confront her. In pursuit of her “best self” she threw off the shackles of marriage and motherhood to become a successful author of semi-autobiographical feminist novels so wildly popular they’ve inspired countless women to also up and leave their husbands and lives of quiet desperation.

One such woman was the wife of a judge who’s threatening to literally imprison Nora for, though unbeknownst to her, not actually being divorced while living a wild and free life. So, Nora has returned, to ask Torvald to file for divorce. Still enslaved, still unapologetically critical of the systems of oppression that are still at play in her life, still a force to be reckoned with, she comes to discover the people she left behind are not by any means happy for her and the life of freedom she pursued.

In fact, they swear at her freely as she espouses self-helpisms, in silly anachronisms sprinkled throughout the play heightened by highly stylized performances, directed by Krista Williams in the Harvey Theatre at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Peggy Trecker White’s Nora gestures wildly, often positioning her body in hyper-masculine, modern ways. In her corset and long-skirted fancy frock, she straddles one of two chairs, facing its back; she sits with legs spread, elbows on knees; she takes up all the space. When she moves, she’s like a Martha Graham dancer, body at a horizontal angle with arms and legs outstretched, yearning to break free. Her face is tense, her words emerge like punches. She bangs her forehead against one of two walls; she leans against the single table in the room as if she were Sisyphus pushing the boulder; she slams herself onto the ground and lies there, as if post-coital, with Torvald after a climactic confrontation. She’s fascinating to watch, but more for her execution of choreography than for the character, at times obscured by her dramatic movements and overly stylized way of speaking.

Though Nora is a wonderfully complex character as envisioned by Hnath, a feminist anti-hero who’s not entirely sympathetic. She even makes us question our own feminist assumptions. As does her daughter Emmy, played with great formality by Hannah Eisendrath, in a powerful scene between mother and abandoned daughter who’ve never know each other. In many ways, Emmy’s conservatism and longing for control and what’s safe and known in marriage, mirrors the shift from second and third wave feminism to their millennial daughters and granddaughters as outlined in a 2011 New York Times opinion piece “Is Sex Passe” by novelist Erica Jong. Nora insists Emmy is just like her before she became enlightened that marriage is an “unnecessary process of self torture” that says “I own you.” But Emmy makes a pretty convincing argument for being owned.

Torvald, too, has been hurt by Nora’s absence, and, especially as played with great naturalness and ease by J.W. Morrissette, is terrifically sympathetic. Human and humorous, he’s mad as hell at Nora not just for leaving, but for how she’s portrayed him in her little books. He doesn’t see himself as “condescending,” “cruel,” and “constipated,” and now is trying oh so hard to just be “the good guy.” But Nora won’t let him.

Likewise, Anne Marie, the nursemaid who raised Nora as well as her children, and played surrogate wife Torvald in her absence, accuses Nora of being selfish and ungrateful for all Anne Marie sacrificed in the interest of cleaning up Nora’s mess. Anne Cooper is wonderful in this role, and rightfully earns tremendous laughs.

Kyle Blasius created a sparsely dressed set that effectively represents a single high-ceilinged room that imprisons the characters in its austerity, lit simply by Thomas Gillette. Costumes by Candace Hughes effectively evoke period and class, and allow the actors to move in ways both grand and subtle.

A Doll’s House, Part 2 offers an open-ended dialogue about men and women and what it means to live in matrimony. What does it truly require to be free, and can it ever be done? What does it mean to be alone and to sustain a life with others? How does one live authentically, regardless of the age in which one lives? They’re unanswerable questions, yet well worth raising. And Interlochen’s production does so quite successfully with this provocative, award-winning, new play inspired by an eternally provocative old play.