A Doll's House

Image Richard Campbell

The Vaughans are all set to enjoy their new life together in their new home. Thomas has been promoted to a senior position in the Cabinet and Nora is delighted. At last, they can put their troubles behind them. Read more …

However, all too soon their delicate happiness is shattered by the arrival of an uninvited visitor. As the lies that Nora has told, and the risks that she has taken to protect her husband are exposed, they are forced to question just how perfect their marriage really is. Now, it seems, only a miracle will set them free.

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House caused outrage both in its style and content when first staged in 1879. Zinnie Harris has transposed her version from late 19th-century Norway to Edwardian London and shifted the tale of intrigue, fraud and betrayal from the world of finance to that of politics. Her story has strong contemporary resonances, revealing a world where duty, power and hypocrisy rule.

The critical consensus

A Doll’s House may be traditional theatre: but here McLaren exposes its veins, making it pulse with relevance to an audience familiar with the fake smiles of politicians and the paper-thin walls which separate us from our true desires. Gripping and tense with some blistering performances, it closes the door on the Lyceum’s season with a resoundingly memorable impact.

(*) Edinburgh Spotlight, 18/04/2013

A Doll’s House isn’t the easiest play to stage, but nor is it the most complex. It’s theme’s are strong and it’s characters well drawn. If this production is proof of anything, it is that tinkering for tinkering’s sake is never a good idea.

(*) (*) (*) Neil McEwan, TVBomb, 17/04/2013

Radical tinkering of Ibsen does work. Lee Breuer’s imaginative re-imagining for Mabou Mines at the Edinburgh festival a few years back springs to mind. But too often this production’s modern topicality proves its undoing.

Alan Chadwick, STV, 18/04/2013

Consequently, this production, like Harris’s script itself, often seems like a debilitating battle between conflicting elements.

(*) (*) Mark Brown, The Telegraph, 19/04/2013

Light on its feet, Graham McLaren’s production of A Doll’s House gives Zinnie Harris’ new version of the play a clarity of purpose which was perhaps missing in its London production of 2009.

Thom Dibdin, The Stage, 22/04/2013

A tremendously tense and urgent staging of Ibsen’s most famous drama.

(*) Joyce McMillan, 18/04/2013

Without being radical, Graham McLaren's production, with its elegant Georgian set by Robert Innes Hopkins, makes some forthright moves, showing us not only the erotic charge that galvanises the central couple, but also, in Brian McCardie's ferocious Neil Kelman (Ibsen's Krogstad), a political reptile worthy of The Thick of It.

(*) Mark Fisher, 22/04/2013

There’s little value added to a frustratingly uneven production by either Robert Innes Hopkins’s set (a realistic grand apartment with emotionally ineffective dirt mired on the walls) or Nick Sagar’s often bombastic music.

Mark Brown, Scottish Stage, 25/04/2013