Tragic tale of a doll-child

IBSEN’s tragedy is deep as an ocean - and this production of Nora, based on A Doll’s House, presents a merry Nora (Penny Layden) as a tragic but much-loved woman spending her life behaving as other people define her – a doll-child.

Her wake-up call is a crisis, occasioned by a forged signature on a debt whose discovery threatens her husband Torvald (David Michaels), her life, her sanity, her family and his career. The stakes are high, and the drama unfolds as she confides in her friend Christine (Sanchia MacCormack) and realises rather late in the day that the justification for her actions, at least in the eyes of the law, does not hold water.

She has borrowed money secretly for a rest cure for Torvald – he thinks it was paid for by her father. But the debt is owed to Krogstad (Stuart Laing), crooked lawyer, and blackmail – a job in Torvald’s bank – is his price. Nora’s dilemma – should she tell Torvald - involves more and more subterfuge.

As she delays, the sense of doom intensifies. As each visitor arrives the stage lighting throws their shadow to precede them into the stark, cold, modernist home. Will it be Kronstadt?

Finally, inevitably, Kronstadt reveals the lie, and Torvald’s high-minded cruelty banishes Nora as unfit mother. Nora’s emotional journey is almost done – she must banish herself in order to become a woman. She leaves her children, her home, her role and a bereft, uncomprehending Torvald, stark naked and curled into the foetal position, as the play ends. Wonderful.

Jane Howard