Nora — A Doll's House review: Clever, pointed riff on Ibsen has mixed results

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Nick Curtis @nickcurtis12 February 2020

Nothing’s really changed for women since the 19th century according to playwright Stef Smith. She takes Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 study of oppression and emancipation, A Doll’s House, and refracts it through parallel British narratives set in 1918, 1968 and 2018. The results are mixed, sometimes intensifying and illuminating, and sometimes coarsening the themes.

The three scenarios overlap and interweave impressively in Elizabeth Freestone’s production for the Young Vic and Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre, but there are also some startlingly clumsy moments.

We are first introduced to 2018 Nora (Anna Russell-Martin), a ballsy Scot who seeks solace from looming poverty in scratchcards and cornershop quarter bottles of scotch. The Nora of 50 years before, played by Natalie Klamar with a breathy childishness that’s hard to take seriously, is someone for whom the pill came too late. Amaka Okafor as 1918 Nora has a steeliness born of being suddenly able to vote.

Place-setting milestones like emancipation and contraception are laboriously emphasised. There’s great subtlety, however, to the way each actress shifts into the role of Nora’s friend Christine with each change of time zone.

The same male actors play the domineering husband Tom, the blackmailing employee Nathan and the predatory acquaintance Daniel in all three stories, their performances running the gamut from deft to absurd.

The mix of fine-grained detail and thumping obviousness persists throughout. Tom Piper’s set gives us three doors and three overlapping floors and ceilings. When Luke Norris as the husband is about to rape Nora in 1968, the shock is heightened by the recoil of the other two women.

By contrast, the ending is so grossly distended it feels like we’re living through Nora’s dramatic final epiphany three times, like Groundhog Day.

Smith then tacks on a strident speech for the lead trio which is as superfluous as the earlier hints of a lesbian attraction between Christine and Nora. This is a clever, pointed riff on Ibsen, but it could be much, much better.

Until March 21 (020 7922 2922, youngvic.org)

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