‘You’ve lies in the whites of your eyes, Nora. What have you done…?’ Read more …
Nora is the perfect wife and mother. She is dutiful, beautiful and everything is always in its right place. But when a secret from her past comes back to haunt her, her life rapidly unravels. Over the course of three days, Nora must fight to protect herself and her family or risk losing everything.
Ibsen’s brutal portrayal of womanhood caused outrage when it was first performed in 1879. This bold new production by one of Scotland’s most exciting playwrights reframes the drama in three different time periods. The fight for women’s suffrage, the swinging sixties and modern day intertwine in this urgent, poetic play that asks how far have we really come in the past 100 years?
This is a radical, innovative and clever piece of theatre which flows with poetry, illuminating the truth of our times by forcing us to look back into the harsh sun of our past.
An inventive reimaging of a classic that bends the rules of time.
This makes for an explosive couple of hours in Elizabeth Freestone’s slow-burning production.
Stef Smith's Ibsen adaptation is flawed but often inventive.
Dizzyingly brilliant.
The only shame is that the play really gets into its stride just as it comes to an end.
This production of Nora: A Doll's House is bold, exciting and gripping throughout.
Stef Smith’s excellent adaptation has Noras experience economic and emotional pressures through history.
Smith’s version and this production at least confirm the ways in which Nora’s dilemma has increased in meaning and relevance with age. Yet this script is too blunt and the characters too thinly drawn, to really stir and provoke.
Stef Smith does an excellent job of weaving together multiple threads into a rich and absorbing tapestry which is directed with clarity and purpose by Elizabeth Freestone.
Neither director Elizabeth Freestone nor her variably accomplished cast are able to imbue Smith’s overloaded and increasingly polemical script with the power its subject matter deserves.
This production of Nora: A Doll’s House reminds us that “there is so much life to live", and you have to live it for yourself. It’s an energetic whirlwind but you come out of the theatre a little taller.
Stef Smith on reimagining A Doll's House: 'I couldn't just wrench the play out of Ibsen's hands'.
Stef Smith--Nora: A Doll's House
Tramway, Glasgow from Friday March 15, 2019, until Saturday April 6, 2019. More info: www.tramway.org
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