A Doll’s House – Review – Sheffield Crucible

By Clare Jenkins, September 2024

When A Doll’s House was premiered in Copenhagen in 1879, it caused a sensation with its depiction of a wife and mother as a caged songbird, trapped by societal expectations, and forced to sing for her supper.

Nearly 150 years later, it still has things to say about the role of women, marital compromises, family and personal secrets.

Chris Bush – the playwright behind the stunning Standing at the Sky’s Edge – has adapted Ibsen’s classic largely successfully, though with a few quibbles. Despite saying in an interview: “the more I got under its skin, the less I needed to change”, there are changes. Some – like paring back the more elaborate dialogue – are understandable, others less so.

Nora Helmer, the central character, is now depicted as an orphan, as opposed to simply a motherless child – presumably to underline her feelings of personal and financial insecurity. An overprotective father is recast as an adoptive father, a judge for some reason, whose household, we’re told in the final scene, was ‘a cesspit’. Her old friend Christina (a hugely sympathetic Eleanor Sutton) was, apparently, in the same orphanage, as opposed to being the only financial support of an ailing mother and younger brothers. Most crucially, Nora’s husband Torvald is denied our sympathy at the end, portrayed not as an emotionally out-of-his-depth man appealing for a second chance, but as a leopard who cannot change his spots.

“Dormant frustration”

Those aside, the production, with its period setting and costumes, is engrossing, thanks not least to Siena Kelly’s mesmerising and unfaltering central performance as Nora.

The play opens on Christmas Eve, in the Helmers’ Norwegian apartment. Chiara Stephenson’s stylishly simplistic set is a gauzy grey box that rises to reveal the cosily-lit living-room – and, eventually, the secrets hidden within it.

Nora dashes in laden with parcels, breathlessly chatters, eats macarons and generally plays the part of her conformist husband’s spoilt pet ‘squirrel’. As Torvald, Tom Glenister – while a good, steady foil for his wife – is perhaps a tad miscast, looking too fresh-faced to be a briefcase-toting bank manager intent on maintaining his position in society.

Although on the surface the couple’s life seems idyllic, it’s built on flimsy foundations. Nora harbours a guilty secret and a dormant frustration with his treatment of her as a doll, his ‘little airhead’, a plaything, another child. And here again, for some reason, the original three children are changed to two, who never actually appear, so we miss seeing Nora hiding under the table in a game of hide and seek. As a result, some of Ibsen’s subtlety is missing – as when, in the original, she asks the children not to tell their father about a visit by the menacing Krogstad (Eben Figueiredo, with a dodgy London street accent).

“Tension mounting”

Even he, though, has a back story, revealing that no-one is immune to uncertainty and hardship. It’s the way people deal with such things that matters.

Programmed to play a part, Nora can reveal more of her true self to the ailing Doctor Rank (Aaron Anthony), the family friend who’s secretly in love with her. When he confides that his consumption is terminal, Nora, insensitive to the misfortunes of others, scolds him for spoiling her mood. Similarly, when Christina, now widowed and poverty-stricken, turns up to ask for help, Nora trills about her own seemingly-wonderful life. Yet for all this self-centredness, Siena Kelly retains our sympathy throughout, capturing both Nora’s increasing desperation – climaxing in the manic dance rehearsal – and her iron-in-the-soul transformation into an independent woman, at whatever cost.

Under Elin Schofield’s firm direction, the characters move restlessly around the sparse set, the women constantly touching their hair, crossing their arms, smoothing down their dresses, the men striding and standing purposefully. The pace rarely falters, the tension mounting inexorably to the final scene where Torvald discovers Nora’s secret, rages against her, and learns that even songbirds can break the confines of their cage.

‘A Doll’s House’ is at Sheffield Crucible Theatre until 12th October
images: Mark Douet