A Dolls House
April 27, 2008
A Dolls House
Venue: Northern Stage
Date Reviewed: 24th April, 2008
When you are told the interval is around one hour and forty five minutes in to the play after Act 2, with only a brief three minute break between the first two Acts your heart sinks. But after a few minutes of A Dolls House you are longing for the interval to never come as this is a Rolls Royce production that delivers on all fronts.
Liberties have been taken with the Henrik Ibsen play, in an adaption by Frank McGuiness, which is now set in the 1950s. But Director Erica Whyman makes the story flow as if it was always meant to be set after the war and her cast deliver a flawless production.
There is no doubting the evening belongs to Tilly Gaunt (who also starred in Ruby Moon at Northern Stage , again directed by Whyman). Her performance as Nora, the dainty delicate wife, who is only off stage for a brief time, is in a word spellbinding.
The story revolves around Nora, who appears happily married with two children and cannot hide the delight she has in knowing her husband has secured a good job with the bank and his pay will be increasing. When her friend Kristine (Karen Traynor) arrives Nora admits that years before, when her husband was very ill she borrowed some money so she could look after him. But her husband, Trovald, (John Kirk) always believed the money came from Nora’s father just before he died
By co-incidence Trovald offers Kristine a job at the bank, but has to fire someone to take her on. The person he chooses is Krogstad (Chris Myles). Not only does Trovald not know about the loan but he also is unaware that it was Trovald who arranged the loan for his wife.
When Krogstad turns to Nora for help to save his job, he tries to blackmail her by revealing he knows she obtained the loan under false pretences.
Nora then has to decide if she wants the truth to come out. When she chooses her fate she reveals she is not the flighty , put upon wife everyone thinks she is and makes a decision that will not only affect her, but her husband and more importantly her children.
Why a woman can choose the path she does leaves you think about the play and its moral dilemma for sometime afterwards.
Soutra Gilmour has designed a beautiful set that contains Jacobean wallpaper in three different sizes that give the feeling the characters are living a dolls house. I never liked her design for Our Friends in the North but this was in a different league. The back wall of the set has the largest size of print with the smallest being printed on to the glass wall that forms the landing to the flat, while the sides have the middles size. The costumes are also in shapes of grey, with only the odd splash of colour here and there, such as Nora’s dress after she had been dancing or the hooks on the coat stand.
The play starts a short tour after Newcastle, but I hope this version of A Dolls House manages to outlive its planned brief tour and I look forward to seeing Tilly Gaunt in many more production.
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