Hattie Morahan’s bewitching Nora – a woman finally finding her sense of self after nine years of marriage – is the standout performance in Carrie Cracknell’s masterful production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Young Vic. Morahan is captivating to watch and her influence over the men who love her (Dominic Rowan’s Torvald and Steve Toussaint’s Dr Rank) palpable , even as the audience become increasingly aware of the controlled and claustrophobic nature of her existence.
This tension between Nora’s childlike intellectual seclusion and powerful sexual attractiveness comes to a head in her performance of the tarantella in front of the two men just before the interval. Her costume and movement give a sense of puppetry, even as her eyes communicate to the audience that she is indeed ‘dancing as if her life depended on it.’ In the second half of the play, the power balance swings very much to her favour – so much that, in their final confrontation, Rowan’s Torvald is entirely overwhelmed both as character and actor, his shouted protestations having little impact against Nora’s new-found strength and determination.
What is clever about the production is the way in which designer Ian MacNeil’s innovative staging implicates us all in Torvald’s doll-like treatment of his wife. The revolving stage allows us to view the couple’s domestic set-up from every angle and ‘follow’ the characters from scene to scene, while the effects created by lighting, reflection and sightlines through the apartment adds to the sense of conspiracy and entrapment. Importantly, this is not a play about the attribution of blame – Torvald is clearly no monster. Casting the audience in the role of observer and manipulator helps problematise such a reaction, as does Morahan’s horror when Nora realises that she too has contributed to the ill-treatment of others: ‘I’ve been your doll. Just as I was my father’s doll when I was a little girl. And the children have become my dolls’.
The play does not feel tied to its nineteenth century context (especially given the modern pertinence of the juxtaposition of financial and domestic ruin) because of the subtlety of the characterisations. This is psychological drama at its best and the production’s central subject is beautifully realised.
5 STARS
