Theatre review: A Doll's House

Anya Reiss' adaptation of A Doll's House is a faithful one in that it follows the story beats and motivations of Ibsen's original, but also a modern one in that it identifies an archetype we can all recognise and agree is the villain of the piece: Finance bros. At the beginning of Joe Hill-Gibbins' production Nora (Romola Garai) has prepared for Christmas by maxing out her husband's credit card on decorations and gifts for their family, to make up for a pretty miserable time the previous year. She's not worried about paying off the debt: Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is selling his investment company and they'll be millionaires by January. Her excitement seems indistinguishable from anxiety though, as their successful year has come after Torvald's addiction issues almost brought their family down, and only very expensive rehab got him out of it.

She paid for this by asking the company's lawyer, Nils (James Corrigan,) who'd already been in prison for embezzlement, to help her "borrow" investors' funds, which she intends to pay back as soon as the sale goes through.

So when Torvald fires Nils a couple of days before Christmas, Nora's only way of paying the money back without her husband finding out is gone. Leaning for moral support on dying friend Petter (Olivier Huband,) a doctor who's long been in love with her, and Kristine (Thalissa Teixeira,) an old university friend she'd forgotten about until very recently, Nora tries to get Nils reinstated by Torvald, or find another way of getting out of a hole that could implicate her entire family.

Reiss and Hill-Gibbins lean heavily on the anti-capitalist elements of the story: Hyemi Shin's set design is stripped-back chic, leaving the vast pile of branded shopping bags to be the main visual focus. Garai and Mothersdale play the Helmers as a genuinely sexy couple with a very real connection, which leads some of the revelations towards the end of the play to hit particularly hard, but outside of the physical their love language is materialistic, which is ultimately their relationship's downfall.

So Garai's Nora feels like a harsher look at the character than I've seen before: The wife who's sacrificed a lot for her husband is still there, but though her love for him is genuine the fact that she's spent almost a million pounds on his rehab comes in part from a place of believing only the best is good enough for them, and a hurry to get back to the comfortable life they're used to. She's a character racked with anxiety (early on it's suggested this has manifested in an eating disorder but that's not followed up much as the evening goes on) but also a selfish one, who'll instantly lean heavily on her friend after years of cutting her out of her life because she didn't want to deal with Kristine's own time of need.

Courtesy of Alex Lowde's costume design, Garai is probably the first Nora to have to do all her most dramatic scenes in a naughty nurse's outfit, and yet she brings a lot of extra nuance and complexity to what's already one of the most famous and analysed roles in theatre. But Reiss doesn't let us forget the root of all this corruption, and Mothersdale's generally affable Torvald goes to extremely dark and cynical places as a solution to all their financial problems comes at the expense of global chaos and loss of lives.

This take on the final plot twist, which also takes us back to the idea of financiers being the true villains of the piece, is one of the very effective ways the production has found to bring the story into the present day. And either the adaptor, the director or both have also chosen to leave us on a question mark that Ibsen doesn't - between this and Romeo & Juliet, we could be looking at a 2026 meme of productions that leave some ambiguity over what are usually very well-known endings.

There's a couple of things that don't quite make sense: Having all the characters have met an university but not necessarily remember each other sort of holds up until we get to Kristine and Nils having had a past relationship, which feels like a much harder coincidence to swallow here than in a small Norwegian town in the 1870s. And the house has plenty of security on the front entrance but anyone can seemingly wander in through the basement whenever they feel like it. But otherwise this works very effectively as a financial thriller that increasingly dives into the lies the characters have been telling themselves and each other.

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen in a version by Anya Reiss is booking until the 23rd of May at the Almeida Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.