A Doll’s House is one of few dramas that continue to pack an almighty punch. Ibsen’s 1879 heavyweight about the inequality between the sexes sees the noose tighten around the elegant neck of Nora Helmer, over three perfectly constructed acts running from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. This Peter Hall production, with a design scheme whose nicely judged colour palette runs from drab to dull, is enjoyably efficient, although it never manages to make us feel as breathlessly crushed as we should by Nora’s intractable financial and marital dilemma.
That fine actress Catherine McCormack does well to suggest the sheer effort involved in keeping Nora’s domestic edifice from crumbling, being her husband’s cheerful "little skylark" even when pressed by blackmail. In the magnificent final scene, her voice drops a register and she sounds at last like a woman prepared to answer for her own destiny. Finbar Lynch’s Helmer is so morally unremitting that we long, as in Greek tragedy, for his cataclysmic reversal of fortune.
A Doll’s House until 27 Sept (0871 230 1552. www.rosetheatrekingston.org).
A Doll¿s House Revisited
Rose Theatre
High Street, KT1 1HL
