The Stage

A Doll’s House

Published Thursday 24 July 2008 at 11:25 by Jeremy Brien

The theme of the fifth Peter Hall Company season at Bath is women’s role in society, so it is wholly appropriate that its hallmark is the outstanding quality of its leading actresses. Here Catherine McCormack takes centre stage in Stephen Mulrine’s crystal clear adaptation of Ibsen’s 1879 classic, which literally stunned the theatrical world of the time. En route, it questions whether marriage is sacrosanct, and explores women’s duty to discover who they are and to then become that person.

At first, McCormack’s Nora is the embodiment of femininity, particularly in her use of fluttering hand gestures. She appears to have the perfect life as wife and mother, clinging the while to the view that appearance is more important than happiness. But as the well-intended but dubious financial and moral decisions of her past return to haunt her, we witness a deliberate and moving change from pampered plaything to independent woman. It is a stunning performance that underscores Ibsen’s mastery of what personal freedom should be all about, with the only slight reservation that her early innocence is so effectively portrayed that her eventual emancipation appears to be rather sudden.

Almost all Ibsen’s other characters emerge as people clinging to the wreckage of their lives, with Finbar Lynch making Nora’s autocratic husband Torvald a misguided rather than an evil figure, and Christopher Ravenscroft finding dignity as well as bitterness in approaching death as Dr Rank.