Dundee Rep
4 stars
Something rare and miraculous, as Henrik Ibsen observed in his nineteenth century proto-feminist classic, is all anyone aspires to in any relationship. By rights, Torvald and Nora should have both in Samuel Adamson’s new version of the play, reinvented beautifully by director Jemima Levick and designer Alex Lowde in an impeccably turned out Mad Men style 1950s that beyond the happy families exterior is equally as dark.
Neil McKinven’s Torvald is a high-flying banker who seems to have it all. His trophy bride Nora is the ultimate accessory who he keeps thin by banning sweets and keeps out of his business by keeping the letter-box locked. Nora, meanwhile, may shop to drop and play the little girl to perfection, but she’s smarter than she looks and can wrap her avuncularly possessive father figure husband round her finger. Over the course of what should have been a perfect picture-postcard Christmas weekend, the fragile fabric of the couple’s compartmentalised two-tier des-res construction falls apart when Torvald’s casual misogyny shocks Nora into making the ultimate stand.
Levick and Lowde’s approach may be audaciously stylish, but it also sheds fresh light on both the play and its crucial mid twentieth century milieu. Like the women in Mad Men, Nora is a woman on the verge of emancipation, and is played here by Emily Winter with a refreshing vigour that has the coy flirtatiousness of a latter-day WAG in the first two acts, but which manages to make the transformation a natural eye-opener rather than an unconvincingly sudden lurch that the play’s structure can sometimes wrong-foot things with. The result of such boldness is a still pertinent wake-up call to an entire generation.
The Herald, October 25th 2010
ends
4 stars
Something rare and miraculous, as Henrik Ibsen observed in his nineteenth century proto-feminist classic, is all anyone aspires to in any relationship. By rights, Torvald and Nora should have both in Samuel Adamson’s new version of the play, reinvented beautifully by director Jemima Levick and designer Alex Lowde in an impeccably turned out Mad Men style 1950s that beyond the happy families exterior is equally as dark.
Neil McKinven’s Torvald is a high-flying banker who seems to have it all. His trophy bride Nora is the ultimate accessory who he keeps thin by banning sweets and keeps out of his business by keeping the letter-box locked. Nora, meanwhile, may shop to drop and play the little girl to perfection, but she’s smarter than she looks and can wrap her avuncularly possessive father figure husband round her finger. Over the course of what should have been a perfect picture-postcard Christmas weekend, the fragile fabric of the couple’s compartmentalised two-tier des-res construction falls apart when Torvald’s casual misogyny shocks Nora into making the ultimate stand.
Levick and Lowde’s approach may be audaciously stylish, but it also sheds fresh light on both the play and its crucial mid twentieth century milieu. Like the women in Mad Men, Nora is a woman on the verge of emancipation, and is played here by Emily Winter with a refreshing vigour that has the coy flirtatiousness of a latter-day WAG in the first two acts, but which manages to make the transformation a natural eye-opener rather than an unconvincingly sudden lurch that the play’s structure can sometimes wrong-foot things with. The result of such boldness is a still pertinent wake-up call to an entire generation.
The Herald, October 25th 2010
ends
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