Any modern production of A Doll’s House faces a predicament. How, after a century and a half of radical social change, do you convey to a modern audience something of the shock that Ibsen’s play elicited in 1879? And, if you retain its original setting, how do you prevent the play from feeling like a period piece? The Crucible’s staging, directed by Elin Schofield, offers a text adapted by Chris Bush in which the location is still identifiably, though unobtrusively, nineteenth-century Norway, but the dialogue is that of modern-day Britain. This gives it an immediacy that pulls the audience into the action from the start and makes the characters seem recognisable without feeling clichéd. It is a strategy that works particularly well for Siena Kelly, who is entirely believable and compelling in the role of Nora.
The action takes place within the bourgeois house of the title. Chiara Stephenson’s set consists of a translucent domestic exterior lifted as the scene opens to reveal the comfortable home of the newly promoted bank manager Torvald Helmer (Tom Glenister), his wife Nora, their children (kept offstage in this production) and their nursemaid Anna (Mel Lowe) on the eve of Christmas. Torvald’s new status seems to promise wealth and respectability, but a secret from the early days of their marriage threatens Nora with the loss of her material trappings, social status and marital relationship alike. (Bush’s adaptation gives added point to this prospect by making a change to Nora’s back-story; it’s worth saying here that while you definitely don’t need to know Ibsen’s play in order to enjoy this production, it’s worth turning to it afterwards to appreciate some of the choices Bush makes.) Two unexpected visitors to the festive scene are Nora’s widowed childhood friend Christina (Eleanor Sutton), hoping for a job at Torvald’s bank, and the menacing Krogstad (Eben Figueiredo), possessor of the secret with which he hopes to manipulate Nora into safeguarding his own position there. A more predictable guest is Dr Rank (Aaron Anthony), a constant visitor to the Helmers, whose own grim secret (syphilis inherited from his promiscuous father) literalises the play’s central theme of the values and behaviours that parents pass on to their children.
The melodramatic potential of the play’s situation is kept at bay firstly, by its acute portrayal of a marriage whose partners don’t really understand themselves or each other and secondly, by its indictment of the material and moral restrictions faced by nineteenth-century women. By giving Nora the dialogue and mannerisms of an upwardly mobile woman from south-east England, Bush, Schofield and Kelly make it clear that these restrictions are still visible today; one updating that (for me) is less successful is in portraying Torvald not just as self-righteous and controlling but as borderline abusive, force-feeding Nora the macarons she has surreptitiously bought and at one point later in the action commanding her to ‘heel’. Otherwise, Glenister as Torvald generally confines himself to priggish complacency. Clad in cardigan and tie, he sometimes seems to belong to a different century to his wife: where Kelly’s Nora shifts with ease between verbal styles, the self-consciousness with which he describes the feeling of forgiving her misdeeds as a ‘rush’ or decries knitting in favour of more fashionable crochet effectively communicates an awkwardness underlying his position. (The crochet line got quite a laugh; this production wrings a surprising degree of humour out of the Helmers’ marital interplay.)
The portrayal of the couple’s final confrontation is outstandingly done and its outcome retains the power to shock. One tweak to Ibsen’s ending, in which Bush shifts the focus to Anna, I found regrettable: it makes sense given the production’s treatment of Torvald but profoundly changes the import of Ibsen’s play, which leaves open the possibility of Torvald’s own redemption. However, it certainly does not prevent me from recommending this accessible, entertaining and relevant staging.
Drama
By Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Chris Bush
Director Elin Schofield
Photo Credit Mark Douet
Cast Includes: Siena Kelly, Tom Glenister, Eleanor Sutton, Eben Figueiredo, Aaron Anthony, Mel Lowe
Until Saturday 12 October 2024
Running Time2 hours and 45 minutes, including 15-minute interval
Photos by Mark Douet