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A CurtainUp London Review
A Doll's House
The first thing to surprise is the set which starts with a fairly conventional kitchen set with sparkling ornamental glassware but what thrills is that the set spinning to show a bedroom, an office, a small dining room with all the activity we associate with getting ready for Christmas. We can even smell the stew in the kitchen. The set rotates several times to music and gives us an exciting peek into the Helmer family life with different activities and people seen, the kitchen maid, the delivery man, the children, the nursery maid, visitors to Mr Helmer, in each room as it turns. The first scene between Nora Helmer (Hattie Morahan) and her husband Torvald (Dominic Rowan) is about money. Nora is excited because Torvald has been made manager of his bank branch and she feels this will mean an upturn in the family's fortunes. Killjoy Torvald uses every sweet bird diminutive name (his swallow, his chaffinch, his skylark, his hamster) for his pretty wife and she twitters back in a flirtatious stream of flattery asking for an envelope of money for her Christmas present from him but he is always advising caution and thrift. Simon Stephens has done a fine job with his new translation. Nora has been shopping for presents and takes a real delight in her purchases, sneaking one of the purchased chocolates. When Nora's old schoolfriend Christine arrives needing a job in the bank, Nora hasn't seen her for some time and Christine is now a widow and has to find work. Nora confides in her how she paid for a holiday in Italy so that Torvald could recover from an illness. It is assumed she got the money from her father but she forged her father's signature and took out a loan which she has to pay back by saving money from the housekeeping and other allowances from Torvald. When the holder of the loan, Nils Krogstad (Nick Fletcher) loses his job at the bank, he threatens to expose Nora's fraud to her husband unless she can get him, his job back. Hattie Morahan is mesmerising as the conflicted Nora. She practises for the tarantella, her Christmas party piece but as she twirls with her arms held above her head, we can see the terror in her face when she thinks there is no way to stop her husband finding out that she is no better than the disgraced Krogstad. She knows that he will forbid her to see her own children lest she influence them for ill. Hattie Morahan also has a remarkable vocal range, most of the time she uses the child like simpering but when she hears something she doesn't like, her voice drops an octave and a half, into her boots, and she growls out her dissent. Morahan's portrait of Nora is almost in the autism spectrum with her overly frank remarks to others and self praising, high opinion of herself. What the play is to expose the brittleness of this awful marriage. Dominic Rowan on the other hand, is odious. He is controlling, boring, patronising and sanctimonious. It is a very good performance that we despise him so much. After the dance show, Torvald is drunk and slurring his words and we have no respect for his complete change of attitude towards his wife when he realises her fraud will not be made public. Carrie Cracknell and the Young Vic's production brings the play to real life with detailed ensemble performances and images that stay with you. At the interval, I disliked all of Ibsen's characters or rather I didn't warm to any of them. Nora was the least dislikeable but she seemed shallow and materialistic. By the end of the play I wanted to see the sequel to A Doll's House to know what would become of the independent Nora Helmer.
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