Review: A DOLL’S HOUSE, Almeida Theatre

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Romola Garai is a terrific Nora in Anya Reiss’s tension-filled adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

It is the run up to Christmas and the floor is strewn with luxury logo-ed bags. Anyone familiar with the plot of A Doll’s House will recognise this beginning, although in Reiss’s adaptation of the Ibsen classic, the action is transposed from 19th Century Norway to present day London.

Nora and Torvald Helmer have just moved into a rented house and the action takes place in their windowless basement. Hyemi Shin’s design is a stark white room, no furniture (but white goods - a fridge and a washing machine) and an enormous skylight. Could the Helmers be lab-rats in the experiment of rampant capitalism? Or perhaps this is one of Dante’s circles of hell?

Torvald is pre-occupied with the final stages of due diligence for the sale of his asset management company, while Nora is excited to be able to have the sort of instagram-ready Christmas she aspires to. Neither of them yet knows how precarious their house of cards is.

As well as keeping everyone’s Norwegian names, Reiss, in the main, sticks closely to the structure of the original play, although the main theme running through the action is a critique of capitalism, with Nora’s growing self-awareness less to the fore.

This shift of emphasis largely works, particularly in terms of the jeopardy presented by Nora’s past actions. In the original, she forged her father’s signature to take out a loan: here, with the aid of one of the husband’s employees, Nils Krogstad, she has embezzled close to a million pounds to fund her husband’s rehabilitation after a coke-induced heart attack. Act One winds up the tension, with unread emails and WhatsApp messages successfully replacing sealed letters. While running at around 90 minutes, Joe Hill-Gibbins tight direction means things never flag.

Returning to the Almeida after her Olivier Award winning role in The Years, Romola Garai is a totally convincing Nora. Initially skittishly excited, it soon becomes clear that this nervous energy is covering up her anxieties: when an old university friend Kristine (Thalissa Teixeira being a steady voice of reason) calls by, Nora cannot wait to unburden her secret. Things only get worse when Torvald decides he has to sack Nils who, in turn, urges Nora to get him reinstated or else he will expose the crime.

James Corrigan, as Nils, manages to turn what could be an unsympathetic blackmailer into a believable character and the scenes between him and Garai are highlights, with his calm setting out of the predicament fuelling her increased anxiety. In the original version, Nils, on being reunited with Kristine, has a change of heart and withdraws the blackmail threat: it’s a pity that Reiss’ reworking of the ending robs him of this redemption.

The only other character is the Helmer’s friend Dr Rank (Olivier Huband), who is dying of cancer. Nora thinks she might be able to charm the money out of the doctor, but changes her mind when he declares his love for her. Why she makes this u-turn is never clear (nor do we ever find out what ‘little jobs’ she has been doing to pay off some of the money) but the fault here lies with Ibsen.

Throughout the first act, Tom Mothersdale embodies a Torvald pre-occupied with his business and exasperated by, but tolerating, Nora’s extravagances, and it is in the relationship between the Helmers that Reiss deviates most from Ibsen.

In the original, Nora is treated as a child and possession by Torvald, in line with the legal and cultural norms of the time. While there are hints in Reiss’s version of a power imbalance in the marriage - Torvald insists Nora eat a chocolate Santa off his palm - there is, as might now be expected, more a sense of Nora’s agency and shared ideals.

In the shorter second act, exactly where Torvald’s priorities lie becomes clear when Nora’s fraud comes to light. Mothersdale’s fury erupts and the tension cranked even higher. While a topical news event provides a neat resolution to the couple’s problems, and commentary on the callousness of one person’s wealth being built on another’s suffering, it’s a somewhat pat solution.

Although Torvald’s anger leads Nora to declaring that she probably understands their marriage for the first time, and whilst the only luxury branded bag still visible is from Liberty, unlike Ibsen, Reiss leaves open as to what actions Nora will now take.

What it gains as a critique of capitalism, Reiss’ update on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House loses in its take on self-actualisation.

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Mike Askew

A Doll’s House runs at London’s Almeida Theatre until 23 May, with further info here.