(seen at the performance on 13th April 2026)
“First time I’ve ever really enjoyed ‘A Doll’s House’” the monkey remarked to its companion as the curtain fell, greatly amusing the gentleman sitting the other side of her.
It meant it, though. Anya Reiss does an excellent job of stripping away Henrik Ibsen’s Scandinavian lugubriousness to reveal fully how our protagonists arrive in their depressive situation.
Updated to the post “Big Bang” world of investment funds, Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is a cocaine-fuelled escapee from a ‘Gringotts’ Bank, on the verge of selling his outfit for millions.
Firing solicitor Nils Krogstad (James Corrigan) may help the image of the sale – but Krogstad not only helped Torvald’s wife Nora (Romola Garai) steal a high six-figure sum from the company, but also knows where every metaphorical body is buried – and how to conceal the evidence from the buyer’s auditors.
Throw in two University friends, job seeking Kristine Linde (Thalissa Teixeira) and dying doctor Petter Rank (Olivier Huband) as confidants and commentators, and add an ultra-modern all-white apartment (well done, Hyemi Shin) at Christmas plus alcohol, we can sit back and observe.
Director Joe Hill-Gibbins sets such a smart pace that the 90 minute first half flies by in a flurry of greed and increasingly expensive (financially and emotionally) revelations.
The short second act is even tighter, its climax a well-chosen deviation from the standard text, leaving the broadest possible range of outcomes for us to consider as we leave.
Garai’s Nora has her soul replaced by a chip-and-pin machine, her heart by a bag of pound coins. Mothersdale’s Torvald simply inhales most of his cash as illegal drugs, allowing it to ossify his entire personality.
Their marriage is a jacuzzi of financial hot water, in which he lounges while she drowns trying to find out what he wants her to be and loses sight entirely of who she is. That chip-and-pin soul proving no help as she fumbles inside.
Debasing herself at every opportunity is no solace – uninhibited dancing in skimpy clothing lacerating her self-worth as she (never) convinces herself otherwise. Destroying her mothering nature is fear of discovery and the manipulation to keep secrets. Garai is a fascinating study.
She almost deserves the pain dealt by co-conspirator Nils. Corrigan balances sleaze with self-righteous anger, justifying our attention with his revoltingly compelling ensnarements.
Mothersdale likewise retains our sympathy, a troll who escapes the trap in a genius final moment, yet remains a shocking excuse for a human being.
It is hard to sympathise particularly with Telxeira either. She deals well with the shock of unexpected reunion, and we wonder if she is perhaps Nora in another life. Vivid and fascinating.
Hubard too has his moments, his last scene significant as he brings Rank’s story to its conclusion with a single understated detail.
Designer Lee Curran provides a simple rectangle of pale white light above, Gareth Fry’s sound piercing and brittle. Among the shopping bags around the enormous tree, a cess-pit shrine of shady razor-edges to the Capitalist is created.
Ibsen’s message that partnership and money are no substitute for self-esteem, self-knowledge and self-awareness is stark. The varying degrees of self-erosion and almost self-annihilation are difficult to watch, but leave us to question how far we sympathise. What is self-inflicted, what is needed to survive, what is merely “the system”?
Not quite answering is both the strength and weakness of this highly entertaining and well-conceived contemporary update. Worth seeing to make your own mind up.
4 stars.