Olivier Huband and Romola Garai in A Doll’s House [Marc Brenner]

A DOLL’S HOUSE
Almeida Theatre
☆☆☆☆

Anya Reiss’s radical reworking of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House brings the play bang up to date.

We open with Nora (Romola Garai) trying to deflect her husband Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) from noticing her binge shopping – food, drink, presents and decorations – all charged to Amex. Torvald has just sold his asset-management business and the family has moved into a rented home in time for Christmas. There are hints of darker times behind them.

Kristine Linde (Thalissa Teixeira), Nora’s university friend, visits hoping Torvald might offer her a job. Nora confides that she had to find the money to put her coke-addicted husband into rehab after he collapsed. It’s left them in substantial debt, although Torvald knows nothing of this.

Nils Krogstad (James Corrigan), recently sacked by Torvald, visits Nora covertly. He is central to Nora’s troubles and, as it emerges, was once romantically entangled with Kristine.

Meanwhile, their friend Doctor Rank (Olivier Huband), who is in love with Nora, reveals he is dying of cancer, and destabilises things further by sexualising her.

In this contemporary take, the pursuit of money becomes a trap, a hollow world where drugs, drink or spending fill the void. Garai and Mothersdale are superb as the doomed couple, utterly convincing in their co-dependence.

We’re left guessing as to whether Nora will escape her claustrophobic marriage and forge her own path, yet Reiss recognises her as a potent, rather than passive, force in shaping her destiny.

As in Ibsen’s original, her domestic role is performative. Here she moves between dutiful wife, fraudster, and someone who uses her sexuality to retain control.

Joe Hill-Gibbins’s pacy production is compelling and it’s hard to look away from a dysfunctional relationship that threatens to implode at any moment.

Until May 23
almeida.co.uk