Subversive living
A Doll’s House
Moser Theatre, 15-18 November
Production: 5/5
Cast: 4/5
Direction: 5/5
In many ways Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is 19th century drama at its most subversive. In an age when industrial revolution and nationalist triumph were offering freedom and expression to ever more men, women remained subordinate, under the laws of nature, of God and of man. Ibsen’s Nora, however, inadvertently makes an undeniably political statement, when she leaves her husband’s house forever.
This remarkable production succeeds in conveying Ibsen’s sensitive and deeply insightful understanding of the intimate relations between men and women in bourgeois society. The appearance/reality dichotomy is omnipresent, brought out most creatively in the use of Simon and Garfunkle’s The Sound of Silence, recurring throughout the play.
Although at first the use of such iconic music of 1960s seems misplaced, the purity of tone and melancholic connotations seem brilliantly to express Nora’s anomie. The sense of impending social change is equally fitting. The set is beautiful, emanating that familiar warmth of a traditional high Victorian bourgeois drawing room. There is a lavish Christmas tree, multitude of books, fairy lights and presents, and in the corner, a doll’s house.
Several attempts are made to ‘modernise’ the play, including computergenerated images flashing pictures of the characters and the street outside. Modern costumes, in particular Nora’s jeans seem somewhat out of place, while the use of the recent 1997 translation provides the occasional anomalous word such as ‘loser.’ Claire Palmer is exemplary as Nora.
Youthful, excitable, loving generous and entirely without malice, she becomes desperate, hysterical and fearful of a man’s world she has never been allowed to understand. Her husband Torvald Helmer appears genuinely without passion or human feeling. Kane Sharpe excels as the cold, patronising, misogynist, who considers his wife to be his ‘prize possession.’ The supporting roles are no less applaudable, especially Ben Galpin’s Nils Krogstadt.
As the morally deficient lawyer, who has spend years suffering from society’s unforgiving treatment of a man who broke the law, Galpin allows us to see the humanity in Nils, that his ruthlessness is a product of his situation. He develops in the course of the play from a shady figure, inspiring fear and distrust to a man flawed like all others and pitiable. Jess Hammett is admirable as the maternal servant Anne-Marie, believable in her fondness for Nora.
Stewart Pringle’s Dr Rank is a more complicated character, and while his bitterness at his impending death creates empathy, Pringle at times appears too young. This production of A Doll’s House is deeply poignant. The central relation between husband and wife is brilliantly acted and its progression grips the audience throughout.
Central to this is the ironic paradox between Helmer’s superficial affection and flattery, his description of Nora as many varieties of delicate bird, and the cruelty of his objectification and oppression. This is compulsive viewing, as we wait for the secret to emerge and for Helmer’s reaction, but her departure is almost as shocking today as it would have been to a contemporary audience.
17th Nov 2005