For someone whose work is often thought of as distant, cold and severe, it’s almost surprising to realize how interested Ingmar Bergman was in Christmas. In his masterful Fanny and Alexander, it’s the magic of the season that allows the title characters to find solace from the cruelty of the world they live in, and while it has nothing to do with the season, it’s impossible to watch Cries and Whispers, with its intense red hues and dysfunctional themes, and not to think about how most seasonal films that came after it, tend to borrow from its structure. Now enter Nora, Bergman’s pithy adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House, playing at the Cherry Lane Theatre, which with all its Christmas motifs and unique kind of desolation, might as well be taking place in the marionette puppet owned by Fanny and Alexander.

The Christmas-set play stars Jean Lichty as Nora Helmer, the perfect wife and mother who is adored by her husband Torvald (Todd Gearhart) and pretty much everyone else who knows her. To perennial visitor Dr. Rank (George Morfogen) she is the ultimate platonic object of affection, to her childhood friend Christine (a wonderful Andrea Cirie) she represents a new opportunity after becoming a widow, and even the corrupt Krogstad (Larry Bull) who begins blackmailing her, seems to be more affected by how his actions harm her, than by what the fulfillment of his wishes might bring. Nora after all, is a chameleon that adapts best to fit the people she’s with, she’s a master of illusion who along the years has failed to recognize even who she is.

In Bergman’s streamlined version (cut from three acts to a little under two hours with no intermission) the people in Nora’s life slowly become ghosts who haunt her every resting minute. When certain characters are not in the scene, director Austin Pendleton, makes them wait standing or sitting in the background, eternal presences in Nora’s selfless mind. However as her delicate world begins to crumble, we begin wondering if she’s only devoting herself to others in order to avoid acknowledging her own needs. If Ibsen suggests that Nora is nothing but a doll being manipulated by others, Bergman reassures us that they’re all puppets acting according to the whim of desire, greed and even lack of those.

While there are no real changes, other than the slimmer plot, by the time the play reaches its finale one almost sighs with relief upon realizing that all of the characters survived, since Bergman’s script fills their minds with constant dread and agony, but takes away the luxury of time. Exceptionally acted by Lichty and company, Nora sets out to explore if people with no cares in the world have indeed achieved ultimate happiness. Like Ibsen realized more than a century before his adaptation, the answer might lie in how willing they are to play the game life demands of them, and whether they’re able to write their own rules.