The Donmar's Doll’s House
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Yet again the Donmar has done it - taken a classic and made it a play for our times. It resonates in so many different areas, is beautifully acted, and perfectly staged.
In The Doll's House, we meet a 19th century family in a very modern conundrum, one fraught with fraud, loans and politics. What could be more timely? (One former minister who sat in the front looked suitably serious indeed.)
Ibsen’s story of a wife who takes out a loan to help her husband and is caught by a loan shark is given many interesting new aspects by Zinnie Harris. The cast is perfectly chosen to portray these - Gillian Anderson is no flighty, silly, girl, as some productions make her out to be. Right from the beginning she's a thoughtful, even calculating, woman who tries to play the game as she sees it, appropriate for her time: women plead, men give - if they feel like it. Even if one's beauty often procures one's wishes and a sensuous, almost desperately passionate dance distracts, it does feel like prostitution all the same - a fact best ignored, as she studiously tries to.
The production is more explicit here, too, as her love is treated with disdain and callous cruelty by a very cold Thomas (Toby Stephens). Yet she retains a luminous innocent, hoping against all hope - or indeed all evidence - for a validation of her love. But then, when that miracle does not happen, when her efforts to help her husband are devalued by him, her suppressed fury finally bursts through, and she leaves him with a stunning icy coldness I have not seen in a Nora before. When people are shocked to the core, their survival instinct takes over and they act with a detachment that seems extraordinarily composed, as if they'd had this new life waiting just waiting to come out.
The parallel story of Christine and Neil (Tara Fitzgerald and Christopher Eccleson), again beautifully portrayed in their pain and longing for love, is very poignantly different in that the miracle does happen. A 'bad' man changes through being loved. Are we to think that change is easier when you are not part of the establishment? That you can access your heart and your humanity so much more easily when you have less to lose? Is the cold, contemptuous Thomas just a prototype of his class, his grandiosity almost laughable as a sign of a class that finds it impossible to empathise or feel with another, even if they are married to them?
It is certainly shocking to see him utterly crumbling, collapsed on the floor, and to sense that he will not change at all. He is stuck forever in his single-minded, egocentric ambition, much more trapped than Nora, who leaves with her head held high - very sober now, but alive and able to live.
How lucky we are to have this place in London. Not only can you enjoy the excellent craftsmanship of good actors, and staging perfectly suited to the play and the place, but you are also sure to see something that will make you think.
- The Southbank Gourmande
Ibsen’s story of a wife who takes out a loan to help her husband and is caught by a loan shark is given many interesting new aspects by Zinnie Harris. The cast is perfectly chosen to portray these - Gillian Anderson is no flighty, silly, girl, as some productions make her out to be. Right from the beginning she's a thoughtful, even calculating, woman who tries to play the game as she sees it, appropriate for her time: women plead, men give - if they feel like it. Even if one's beauty often procures one's wishes and a sensuous, almost desperately passionate dance distracts, it does feel like prostitution all the same - a fact best ignored, as she studiously tries to.
The production is more explicit here, too, as her love is treated with disdain and callous cruelty by a very cold Thomas (Toby Stephens). Yet she retains a luminous innocent, hoping against all hope - or indeed all evidence - for a validation of her love. But then, when that miracle does not happen, when her efforts to help her husband are devalued by him, her suppressed fury finally bursts through, and she leaves him with a stunning icy coldness I have not seen in a Nora before. When people are shocked to the core, their survival instinct takes over and they act with a detachment that seems extraordinarily composed, as if they'd had this new life waiting just waiting to come out.
The parallel story of Christine and Neil (Tara Fitzgerald and Christopher Eccleson), again beautifully portrayed in their pain and longing for love, is very poignantly different in that the miracle does happen. A 'bad' man changes through being loved. Are we to think that change is easier when you are not part of the establishment? That you can access your heart and your humanity so much more easily when you have less to lose? Is the cold, contemptuous Thomas just a prototype of his class, his grandiosity almost laughable as a sign of a class that finds it impossible to empathise or feel with another, even if they are married to them?
It is certainly shocking to see him utterly crumbling, collapsed on the floor, and to sense that he will not change at all. He is stuck forever in his single-minded, egocentric ambition, much more trapped than Nora, who leaves with her head held high - very sober now, but alive and able to live.
How lucky we are to have this place in London. Not only can you enjoy the excellent craftsmanship of good actors, and staging perfectly suited to the play and the place, but you are also sure to see something that will make you think.
- The Southbank Gourmande
