A Doll's House

Synopsis

First performed in Copenhagen in 1879. Christmas Eve. Excitement and love filled the Helmer's apartment. Nora is her husband's cherished 'songbird' and the romance of their marriage has been played out over the years. But beneath the carefree surface of their lives, the secret of how Nora saved her husband's life begins to emerge. Tension increases as the characters react against one another and this taut and gripping drama ends as Nora demands her right to individual freedom. One of the great landmark plays of the nineteenth century.

Our Review:

28 February 2005

I see no reason to dispute the programme’s assertion that “Ibsen is acknowledged as the father of modern drama”, but there were times during West Yorkshire Playhouse’s A Doll's House when modernity was the last thought in my mind. Certainly the ideas about women’s independence and the nature of marriage were advanced for 1879 – and the serious debate on these issues that closes the play (before an unnecessary directorial flourish) is by far the most involving part of the evening.

However, the way in which the issues are worked through sometimes seems pretty close to old-fashioned melodrama. The initial situation is challenging and closely based on a true story. Nora, devoted to her husband Torvald, has forged a signature to secure the loan needed to take him south for the good of his precarious health. Now, years later, with Torvald healthy and newly prosperous, Krogstad, the original lender, is about to be sacked from his job by Torvald, and the happy fami...

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