Theatre review: A Doll's House

The seasoned veteran in 2019's round of Artistic Director Musical Chairs, Rachel O’Riordan taking over the Lyric Hammersmith means she's run theatres in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and now England. On the other hand she could be seen as the one with the most to prove to a London audience, considering her last outing here was last year's catastrophically misjudged revival of Foxfinder. Well her opening production feels like it's done a good job of catching the Lyric's brand, taking as it does a well-loved classic - Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, a play that seems to be on a lot of people's radar at the moment - and giving it a fresh twist. It's also, despite the fact that the story's been kept in the year of the play's premiere, 1879, a reinvention that ties in to a lot of current concerns, namely the way the rose-tinted view of Britain's colonial past has finally come back to cause destruction in Britain itself, and that past is ripe for reevaluation.

So Tanika Gupta moves the story to Calcutta, and the famous heroine Nora becomes Niru (Anjana Vasan,) a local woman married to the low-ranking civil servant Tom Helmer (Elliot Cowan.) Tom's just landed a new job as head of the Tax Office, so the couple are moving up in the world.

It should mean never having any financial worries again, but money problems from the past come back to haunt Niru just when she thinks she's safe: An innocent attempt to help old friend Mrs Lahiri (Tripti Tripuraneni) has unexpected knock-on effects, and soon Niru is being blackmailed with the fact that she once fraudulently took out a loan without her husband's knowledge. The wider politics of the new setting do crop up in Gupta's adaptation, notably affecting the way the loan shark comes across - usually a bit of a shifty character, Assad Zaman's Kaushik Das is much more sympathetic and dynamic, a man as much driven to desperation by the ruling class' ability to cut short his career on a whim as Niru is by the skeletons in her closet.

But where the politics of colonialism really come into play is in the way the central relationship becomes a microcosm: Tom sees himself in a protective role over his wife that's downright overtly patronising. She's never Niru, she's always his "squirrel," "nightingale," "princess" or even "exotic pet." When he finally discovers that she has agency of her own and has acted on it, his reaction instantly reveals the real way he sees her. Cowan's Tom is a particularly brutal and unlikeable version of the character, contrasting strongly with Niru. Vasan is one of those actors who can make an audience fiercely like her from the moment she arrives on stage, and it's an ability she shares with her character here, although it proves less of an advantage in real life than to an actor: Niru has constructed her obliging persona so thoroughly it's only during the course of the play that she discovers she and her husband don't really know each other.

Not everyone is as blind to the reality as Tom, and the likeable, smitten Dr Rank (Colin Tierney) provides a glimpse of what might have been, as well as one of the many dead ends during the course of the play as Niru attempts to find a way out of her predicament. One of the things O'Riordan's production does well is ratchet up the tension, making A Doll's House appear practically a thriller as Niru makes increasingly desperate attempts. On the other hand the amount of time it takes to get to the inevitable revelation is something that's felt acutely here; the fact that the play's ending is so famous probably contributes to the occasional feeling that we're treading water as we lead up to that twist, but putting the interval very early, leaving an 85-minute second half, doesn't help either. I'm also not sure keeping the children offstage is the best decision; Niru mentions them often but never seeing their connection takes away from what she has to lose in her final decision.

On the other hand knowing the ending lends something to the way Lily Arnold's set is used: Design is of course one way new Artistic Directors quickly differentiate themselves from their predecessors, and given Sean Holmes' aesthetic was all about exposed scaffolding the lushness of Arnold's sunny courtyard set is a statement in itself. It's dominated by the heavy doors to the outside world that Niru seems to have cut herself off from to some extent, and it's noticeable that nobody ever uses them - even characters visiting from outside enter and exit from side passages, saving the main doors for the conclusion. The doors don't slam at the end; Gupta and O'Riordan leave them metaphorically open to the possibility that the longed-for miracle has a tiny chance of happening. Either way the play's empowerment of its heroine remains intact, and O'Riordan starts her tenure on a promising note.

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen in a version by Tanika Gupta is booking until the 5th of October at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks.