A Doll’s House

With so many Ibsen plays staged everywhere – his global popularity only second to Shakespeare’s – this traditional production of A Doll’s House reminds us why. Not for Sydney’s Sport by Jove the radical rewriting and cross-gender casting which Belvoir down the road is bringing to Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.

Director Adam Cook has modestly modernised the vernacular but the full script, period and costumes remain true to the Norwegian shocker that premiered in 1879. Clearly on show is Ibsen’s almost thriller plotting, his riveting interplay of deeply written characters, and his clarion critique of social conventions, greed and hypocrisies, all pressure cooked within the domestic hothouse of the home.

While Hedda escapes by shooting herself, Nora simply leaves the ‘doll’s house’ by the front door, scandalously abandoning her husband and children.

This ending still has impact even if the final showdown between Nora and her patronising husband is uncertain and underpowered. Cook has developed a finely told, literal and well-performed production but one sometimes lacking wit, pace and imaginative play. 

Except at her denouement, Matilda Ridgeway is outstanding as Nora, sickly girlish and waspish, then manic and terrorised when her seemingly innocent fraud entraps her. Douglas Hansell maintains the pressure as the husband and newly promoted bank manager, and almost makes digestible Torvald’s relentless, sweetly coated putdowns of his ‘little songbird’ wife. 

Anthony Gooley is threatening as the desperate blackmailer Krogstad; and Francesca Savige brings truth to the complex choices faced by the play’s other key female voyager, Kristine Linde. Barry French is also strong as the depressive Dr Rank, hankering for Nora, as is Annie Byron as the maid.

The lengthy but engaging action unfolds on Hugh O’Connor’s domestic set, suitably furnished in period but with an odd flat, light blue backdrop of functional doors, more suggestive of a cheap coastal motel. His costumes too, while handsome and supportive of character, have a few standout incongruities.

Cook and his team though deliver a solid and empathetic night of good theatre.