Reviews

A Doll’s House at Sheffield Crucible – review

Chris Bush adapts the classic Ibsen play

Ron Simpson

Ron Simpson

| Sheffield |

27 September 2024

Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in a scene from A Doll's House at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre
Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in A Doll’s House, © Mark Douet

A Doll’s House is very much the story of Nora Helmer, but in the final stages, it is her desolate husband who commands our attention while Nora sits among the audience. That is one of the multiple ironies that pile up around the play, not least that Ibsen took the motor of the plot from a young female acquaintance of his, and a play that champions women ended up being deeply resented by the woman who inspired it.

Torvald and Nora have just come through a difficult few years, with him now promoted to bank manager and able to afford a splendid new apartment. However, Ibsen is always aware of the lurking danger of our past actions and some years previously, Nora forged her step-father’s name in order to obtain a loan to take her husband to Italy for his health. Coincidentally, Krogstad the man from whom she obtained the loan is about to be sacked by Torvald from the bank.

It’s difficult for us to imagine a world where a woman has no right to write a cheque, but this is a matter of honour and Krogstad is often the most interesting character in the play. Seeking respectability, he is the object of unspecified loathing on the part of Torvald and the ever-present house guest Dr Rank. And then we find that, deep in his hinterland, he loved Nora’s friend Christina and was ultimately cast off by her. Eben Figueiredo’s deliberately ambiguous performance only dissolves into naturalness in a memorable act three scene with Christina (Eleanor Sutton) where the two hint at a relationship deeper than Nora and Torvald’s.

There is no point in avoiding a spoiler about the ending: it’s too well known and is discussed in detail in the programme. But why does Nora leave Torvald? It’s a self-centred, brutally myopic outburst from him about the inferior position she must now adopt in his household when he first reads the letter from Krogstad telling all. His patronising reversion to declaiming his love for his bird, his squirrel, when Krogstad does the decent thing, exposes to Nora that she has indeed been living in a doll’s house.

Chris Bush’s sympathetic adaptation gels perfectly with Elin Schofield’s direction, creating one unexpected problem: is A Doll’s House meant to be funny? The number of laughs, especially in the third act as the ultimate climax nears, is disconcerting, though it’s difficult to tell how much the cause is simply an audience giddy from the genuine laughs earlier.

Siena Kelly as Nora is responsible for those early laughs and is wonderfully expressive in treading the line between the spoiled girl overloading on Christmas presents or dancing a mad tarantella (the gaiety evaporated by this time) and facing up to Torvald’s limitations. The final scene, possibly 15 minutes long, between Nora and Torvald, both pretty much unmoving, at opposite corners of the stage, is compelling.

Tom Glenister (Torvald), seemingly a mix of buttoned-up bank manager and devoted husband, gradually exposes the chinks in his character, notably in the moments when the pragmatic hard man surfaces. And then there’s Dr Rank (we’re not surprised at his confession of love for Nora), who is dying of hereditary syphilis: Bush respects the 19th-century decorum with which Ibsen is obliged to cloak the disease. Aaron Anthony is surprisingly youthful, but persuades us of his mortality, even if it comes as a shock to Torvald.

Chiara Stephenson’s designs manage to use the Crucible stage to create a sense both of claustrophobia and expansive comfort. At the outset, an apartment block on two floors almost reaches the audience, then the front lifts to reveal the Helmers’ delightful drawing room: I am less sure about the corridors disappearing into the recesses of the apartment.

A final word for composer Nicola T Chang and pianist Mel Lowe (also a forthright maid, Anna) for the music that seemed always to suggest a contented time past, though I am less enamoured of the present-day tendency to accompany a dramatic climax with a mighty clanging.

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