The highly anticipated Tony award-winning, A Doll’s House, Part 2, with Bianca Amato and Zane Meas, comes to The Baxter Studio from 16 April to 10 May.

The critically acclaimed Tony award-winning play A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath, after successful runs on Broadway and at the Donmar Warehouse in London, comes to the Baxter Studio in April 2025, starring Bianca Amato and Zane Meas.

Presented by The Quickening Theatre Company, the smart, funny, freshly contemporary response to Ibsen’s classic is directed by Barbara Rubin and runs from 16 April to 10 May 205, at 20:00, with Saturday matinees at 15:00

Bianca Amato, perhaps best known as Philippa de Villiers in Isidingo, returns to the South African stage to play Nora, after garnering a wealth of experience and recognition in New York City both On and Off Broadway. SA’s beloved star of stage and screen Zane Meas plays Torvald. Seasoned NY-based Barbara Rubin (Kindertransport, How I learnt to Drive) returns to her home country to take the helm as director. The play also features stage veteran Charlotte Butler (Isidingo, Home Affairs, Green Man Flashing) and Simone Neethling (Arendsvlei, Romeo and Juliet, Maynardville 2024). Set Design is by Greg King (My Fair Lady, The Beauty Queen of Leenane) and Costume Design is by Maritha Visagie (My Fair Lady, Tosca).

Lucas Hnath’s plays include Dana H., The Thin Place, Hillary and Clinton, Red Speedo, The Christians, Isaac’s Eye, and Death Tax. He has been produced on Broadway at the John Golden and Lyceum Theatres; Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, The Vineyard, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, and Ensemble Studio Theatre. Awards: Whiting Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Kesselring Prize, Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, Obie Award for Playwriting, Steinberg Playwright Award, Windham-Campbell Literary Prize, Lucille Lortel Award, and a Tony Nomination for Best Play (A Doll’s House, Part 2).

The New York Times declared A Doll’s House, Part 2 to be “Smart, funny and utterly engrossing”. Time Out New York gave it five stars and said “F… keeps you hanging on each turn of argument and twist of knife. It’s dynamite.” Hollywood Reporter gave equal praise, saying “While gender politics has seldom been this amusing, there’s also genuine poignancy… Hnath shows a superb knack for balancing humour with serious issues.” The Guardian called it “fast, vibrant, salty, modern.” Time Out London described it as, “Clever, taut, funny”, and London Theatre found it “Playful, provocative and richly intelligent”.

“There is no need to have seen the original A Doll’s House to delight in and relate to this play,” explains Amato. “It stands entirely on its own and promises to ignite much recognition, laughter and fierce debate for us all.”

In the iconic climax of Henrik Ibsen’s original play, written in 1879, Nora Helmer shockingly rejects the suffocating confines of her marriage, and walks out the door, leaving behind her husband and children. We know only that she is desperate for her own becoming, to find her own truth. Now, fifteen years later, she is back, knocking on that same door, because she needs something. What has her life been like on the outside, untethered to tradition, family and convention? What does she want? What ensues is an expansion and a reckoning for everyone in the Helmer household. We relate to each character’s flawed but deeply human take on relationships and responsibility. This thought-provoking and nuanced play debating the pros and cons of marriage is both moving and immensely entertaining – a sharp, often explosively hilarious investigation into societal expectations of love and tradition.

Booking for the highly anticipated A Doll’s House Part 2, at the Baxter Studio, from 16 April to 10 May 2025, is through Webtickets online or at Pick n Pay stores.

COMPANY BIOS

Bianca Amato (actor)

Bianca Amato has had an extensive career in TV and theatre, both in South Africa and in the USA. She spent 15 years in New York City, performing On and Off Broadway. Highlights include the multiple TONY award-winning The Coast Of Utopia and Macbeth at Lincoln Center, directed by Jack O’Brien, The Importance of Being Earnest at BAM, directed by Sir Peter Hall, and Private Lives at The Huntington and The Shakespeare Theatre, directed by Maria Aitken, for which she received The Emory Battis Award for Classical Excellence, and the Elliot Norton Award for Best Actress. Bianca has worked regionally in the US, most notably at the renowned Guthrie Theatre, where she played the leads in Topgirls, Pride & Prejudice, As You Like It, and Pygmalion. Theatrical highlights from South African theatre include A Doll’s House and Greek (Fleur Du Cap for Best Supporting Actress) at the Baxter and Proof at Theatre On The Bay. TV and Film highlights include (upcoming) Huntington, Warrior, The Good Wife, The Big C, Elementary, and the early days of Isidingo: The Need. Bianca is thrilled to back on stage in South Africa.

Zane Meas (actor)

Zane Meas has been an actor for the past 37 years and has appeared in numerous stage, television, film and radio productions. He is fondly remembered as ‘Neville Meintjies’ in the popular daily drama ‘7de Laan’. Zane was last seen at the Baxter in 2020 in the one-man biopic ‘Van Wyk -The Storyteller of Riverlea ‘ which he wrote and played to critical acclaim. He was recently seen in the Market Theatre production of ‘The Brothers, Number One and The Weekend Special ‘ directed by Greg Homann.

Zane established The Fatherhood Foundation of South Africa in 2006 and speaks throughout the country on the effects of fatherless-ness. He has written a best-selling book; ‘Daddy, come home’. He has produced and written a feature film “Father” set in the Cape Flats that was released in March 2013. In 2022 he wrote and directed the West Coast fishing crisis drama ‘Klip Anker Baai’ for the Amazon and eVOD platforms, as well as a short feature for Heartlines’ Fathers Matter campaign.

Barbara Rubin (director)

For the past two decades, Barbara Rubin has cultivated a career as an inventive director of contemporary and classical theatre in New York and abroad. She has worked on Broadway and Off, regionally and internationally in Europe, and in her native South Africa.

Barbara was the Associate Director to Conor McPherson on the Tony award-winning Girl from the North Country on Broadway from 2020 – 2022 and for the show’s 1st National US tour from 2023-2024. Barbara began her directing career in Johannesburg at the Market Theatre where she directed the premieres of Diane Samuels’ Kindertransport, and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, both to critical acclaim. She relocated to the US in 2000 to work as assistant director to Athol Fugard on Sorrows and Rejoicings at the McCarter Theatre, NJ and at Second Stage Off-Broadway. So began her long and rich association with Fugard, and her love affair with NYC. In 2003 she directed the premiere of Fugard’s Valley Song at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. She was reunited with Fugard in New York in 2012 when she collaborated with him on the Broadway revival of The Road to Mecca, and his entire 7-show Signature Theatre Residency, this time as dialect coach. Barbara works frequently as a dialect coach for stage, film and television. In New York, she is the Director of the Acting Company at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Of the many productions she’s directed there, recent highlights include Anatomy of A Suicide, Her Naked Skin, Spring Awakening, Mother Courage, The Merchant of Venice (Beach), The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus. At LIU, she directed Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, for which she received a Kennedy Center honor for Excellence in Direction.

A proud Wits Drama School graduate, Barbara is delighted to be home to direct Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part Two for The Quickening Theatre Company at the Baxter and at Theatre on the Square.

For further media information or interview requests, please contact Fahiem Stellenboom on 021 680 3971 or e-mail fahiem.stellenboom@uct.ac.za.

Fahiem Stellenboom
fahiem.stellenboom@uct.ac.za
072 265 6023
Baxter Theatre Centre
http://www.baxter.uct.ac.za