Reviewing a live performance - Henrik Ibsen's : A Doll's House.

• The genre of the play is realistic, modern prose drama.

• The play is set in three acts and is set in the same location. Nora is not pleased being controlled by Torvald.  Her father controlled her as a young girl, and Torvald has taken over her father’s controlling role. Torvald treats Nora like a child, and Nora resents it. Nora then decides to leave him and her children to pursue a new life. Nora, feeling constrained by the Norwegian male-dominated society of the 19th Century, literally - and metaphorically- breaks out of its walls, so to speak. Torvald Helmet, valuing his honour over his love for his wife Nora, galvanizes her to figuratively abandon her doll house - replete with her husband, 2 children, & 2 servants. She, in striking out on her own, concurrently abandons the rigid social class system of the time, as well as the unwritten rules and mores of society.

• The performance that I attended used dramatic irony in the sense that the audience knew what kinds of mistakes Nora Helmer was committing while the character herself seemed oblivious. In explaining her life’s' hardships, Mrs. Linde said, “You know so little of life's burdens yourself.” Nora's answer was of strength, “I? I know so little of-”. You could hear the sarcasm in Nora's words demonstrating her growing strength. Imagery symbolically guided the process of self-emancipation for Nora, the protagonist of the performance. Objects like the macaroons, the lamp, the Christmas tree, and costumes represented the movement towards freedom of a woman who was a victim of society.

THEATRICAL DEVICES AND CONVENTIONS

• Interior Monologue was used successfully during the performance after Krogstad and Nora’s first confrontation had ended. She projected her thoughts in a worried manner as though thinking out aloud was the only way to vent her worries. She was trying to convince herself to not be afraid: “Oh! Nonsense! He wants to frighten me. I’m not so foolish as that.”  But apart from that interior monologue was not used as a frequent convention.

• This dramatic convention was also used during the last fragment of dialogue by Helmer after Nora had left the house for good.

• Asides were effectively used by Nora when hanging decorations on her Christmas tree. This convention worked successfully as it highlighted her agitation in being confronted by Krogstad when putting the decorations on the tree trying very hard to act as if she hadn’t even seen him.

• Movement and gestures were pivotally used throughout this performance and its success varied with each character. For example, Mrs. Linde (Jennifer Hennessey) did not use effective movement to demonstrate her character’s persona. In my opinion I interpreted the role of Mrs. Linde, when reading ‘A Doll’s House’, as being quite strong and self-liberated, yet in the performance she was interpreted as quite weak in the way she spoke, and Hennessey did not use vivid movements to support this distinct interpretation. However, movement was used exceptionally by Helmer (Ian Dunn) in the use of body language, gestures and stance. My interpretation of the character Helmer was that of a spoilt boy trapped in a grown man’s body and I believe that Dunn captured this perfectly through his boyish walk and his mannerisms used when in Nora’s company.

OVERALL IMPRESSION THE PRODUCTION WAS TRYING TO CONVEY

Doll ’s Houses is considered one of the most controversial plays of its era and even in present day, its main themes and sub-meanings are still very much pivotal in daily life. The production I went to see in the Southwark Playhouse used this mentality in showing that a woman’s struggle for self-liberation is as real, necessary and challenging today as it was in Ibsen’s time. For my part, the director (Thea Sharrock) was trying create a microcosm of the feminist movement in the play. Sharrock also drew attention to how easily the human train of thought can morph from one mindset into another and this was shown by the way Nora stood frozen with a perplexed look upon her face during the last fragment of the play, which greatly contrasted the giddy and childish, fidgety manner Nora had during the beginning.

Over the course of the performance, appearances prove to be misleading veneers that mask the reality of the play's characters and situations. My first impressions of Nora, Torvald, and Krogstad ere all eventually undercut. Nora initially seemed a silly, childish woman, but as the play progressed, I saw that she is intelligent, motivated, and, by the play's conclusion, a strong-willed, independent thinker. Torvald, though he plays the part of the strong, benevolent husband, reveals himself to be cowardly, petty, and selfish when he fears Krogstad may expose him to scandal. Krogstad too reveals himself to be a much more sympathetic and merciful character than he first appears to be. The play's climax was largely a matter of resolving identity confusion—we see Krogstad as a lover, Nora as an intelligent, brave woman, and Torvald as a simpering, sad man, which was all a part of proving the true possibility of breaking lose from an autocratic society.

Situations too are misinterpreted both by the audience and by the characters through clever use of dramatic irony. The seeming hatred between Mrs. Linde and Krogstad turns out to be love. Nora's creditor turns out to be Krogstad and not, as the audience and Mrs. Linde suppose, Dr. Rank. And the seemingly villainous Krogstad repents and returns Nora's contract to her, while the seemingly kind-hearted Mrs. Linde ceases to help Nora and forces Torvald's discovery of Nora's secret.

The instability of appearances within the Torvald household during the performance's end results from Torvald's devotion to image at the expense of the creation of true happiness. Because Torvald seemed craves respect from his employees, friends, and wife, status and image are important to him. Any disrespect—when Nora called him petty and when Krogstad familiarly called Torvald by his first name, for example—angered Torvald greatly to show his spoilt and childish nature. By the end of the play, we saw that Torvald's obsession with controlling his home's appearance and his repeated suppression and denial of reality harmed his family and his happiness irreparably showing that men are not always the stronger sex as society has deemed so.

SETTING

• The performance space in the Southwark Playhouse was very constricted and the set comprised of a small round table with a tablecloth. The stage was very confined and it represented the restrictions and suffocation of a dolls house.

• The set comprised of only the small round table, three chairs, a gramophone, a chandelier and a tiny side table. All these props suggested some sort of Victorian influence by demonstrating illustrious patterns and rich colours. By using these images, the audience is able to identify an exact time period, however minimalist the setting is.

• The set used very deep, monotone, rich colours which created an austere ambience to show the rigidity of the lifestyle people had to live by according to Victorian societal standards.

• The set design showed several ideas and emotions that reflect the conjugal situation of Nora and Torvald Helmer. The sheer fact that the whole play takes place in one room and that, until the last act, Nora is in every scene; she never seems to leave the room: everything comes to her. She is literally trapped in domestic comfort and this is emphasized by the cramped spacing and dark colours. A theme of severance is also communicated through the position of certain props, for example the chairs. Two of the chairs are situated close together around the circular table, whilst the third is placed far away from the main stage area.

• The set created an atmosphere like that of a zoo. Because the audience we so cramped in, it felt as though we were actually inside the room with the characters. I do not believe that the set itself was positioned to communicate a certain scale of the room but instead to literally draw the audience member into the life of the play.

COSTUME     

• All the characters were dressed in Victorian form that by no other means illustrated that the period was indeed Victorian. The difference in costumes also highlighted the difference in class and social background. Nora mainly wore a typical Victorian middle-class Day dress, Torvald; a double-breasted frock coat with a waist coat. Dr. Rank also wears a double-breasted frock coat but much most old-fashioned than Torvald’s. Christine Linde wore a plain grey dress draped over by a rustic looking, heavy knitted brown shawl. Krogstad wore a dark coloured suit and a dark over-coat.  

• All the characters were dressed in lifeless colours throughout most of the play to convey the stringency of the despotic society in which they all had to live. Even though Nora’s character seems to be far from dull and sombre, we are given an insight, at the start of the play, into Nora’s true nature.

• The costume that is the most prominent is that of Nora’s Tarantella dress. It was a burgundy red dress with black additions that instantly shows passion as the Tarantella itself is a very passionate dance. This costume also reveals the increasingly potent anger bubbling inside Nora.  

• All the men are dressed in similar style clothing as they are all, roughly speaking, of the same social ranking. The only difference between the men is the colours they wear. Whilst Dr. Rank and Torvald sport complete grey suits communicating their sheer uniformity (in the case of Dr. Rank, showing that he is indeed a doctor) and professionalism. Krogstad, in contrast wears a much darker suit to draw attention to his growing inner darkness.

• Mrs. Linde’s costume emphasized the hardship she has had to suffer. The brown heavy-knitted shawl itself provided a rustic feel and her plain dress demonstrated her poverty.

LIGHTING

• The play began with the maid walking across the set arranging the chairs, and she then proceeded to opening a window. Once this window had been opened, a flood of bright white light swarmed into the room giving the impression of daylight. This was hugely effective as during the Victorian era, there was no electricity and the only means of acquiring light was either by daylight or candlelight.

• The lighting used throughout the play was very simple but very effective. The main focus was on the candlestick chandelier which was hung from above in the centre of the room.

• To create location and a time of day, the lighting was strong and bright during parts of the play that were set during the day, and lighting was dimmer during the parts of the play set during the night.

• The lighting could arguably be one of the greatest achievements of the entire production as it was not intrusive but very discreet and did not distract the audience from the events happening on stage.

• One of successful aspect of the lighting was that during moments of tension or conflict, the lights subtly dimmed almost as though the entire house is affected by the events.

SOUND

• Sound was not a major necessity during the play and it mostly did not rely on it. However, one of the only times music or sound was used, was during the Tarantella. Music is projected from the gramophone which gave off a rustic, scratchy sound making it sound old-fashioned.

• There was no usage of microphones due to the fact it was such a small room and the audience was packed in so closely around the performance area, which made it easy for the audience to hear the dialogue without difficulty.

• The choice of music during the Tarantella was quite appropriate given that it reminded the audience of the period the performance was set in.

• The choice of music accompanying the Tarantella was very fast and chaotic giving an air of disorder and commotion, which contrasts greatly to that of other acts in which no sound is played.

SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) was born in a time of revolution in Europe. Charged with the fever of the 1848 revolution, a new modern perspective was beginning to emerge in the literary and dramatic world, challenging the romantic tradition. It is Ibsen who can be credited for mastering and popularizing the realist drama derived from this new perspective. His plays were both read and performed throughout Europe (in numerous translations) like no other dramatist before. ‘A Doll's House’ was published and premiered in Copenhagen.

His success was particularly important for Norway and the Norwegian language. Freed from four centuries of Danish rule in 1814, Norway was just beginning to shake off the legacy of Danish domination. ‘A Doll's House’ was written in a form of Norwegian that still bore heavy traces of Danish. Ibsen deliberately chose a colloquial language style to emphasize the theme of realism. Ibsen quickly became Norway's most popular dramatic figure. But, it is the universality of Ibsen's writings and particularly ‘A Doll's House’ that has made this play a classic.

‘A Doll's House’ was the second in a series of realist plays by Ibsen. The first, The Pillars of Society, penned in 1877, caused a stir throughout Europe, quickly spreading to the avant-garde theatres of the island and continent. In adopting the realist form, Ibsen abandoned his earlier style of saga plays, historical epics, and verse allegories. Ibsen's letters reveal that much of what is contained in his realist dramas is based on events from his own life. Indeed, he was particularly interested in the possibility of true wedlock and in women in general, later writing a series of psychological studies on women.

One of the most striking and oft-noted characteristics of ‘A Doll's House’ is the way in which it challenged the technical tradition of the so-called well made play in which the first act offered an exposition, the second a situation, and the third an unravelling. This had been the standard form from the earliest fables up until ‘A Doll's House’. Ibsen's plays were notable for exchanging the last act's unravelling for a discussion. Critics agree that, up until the last moments of the play, A Doll's House could easily be just another modern drama broadcasting another comfortable moral lesson. However, when Nora tells Torvald that they must sit down and "discuss all this that has been happening between us", the play diverges from the traditional form. With this new technical feature, A Doll's House became an international sensation and founded a new school of dramatic art.

Additionally, A Doll's House subverted another dramatic tradition, this one related to character. Namely, Ibsen's realist drama disregarded the tradition of the older male moral figure. Dr. Rank, the character who should serve this role, is far from a moral force; instead, he is sickly--rotting from a disease picked up from his father's earlier sexual exploits--and lascivious, openly coveting Nora. The choice to portray both Dr. Rank and the potentially matronly Mrs. Linde as imperfect, real people was a novel approach at the time.

The real natures of Ibsen’s characters were and remain a challenge for actors. Many actresses find it difficult to portray both a silly, immature Nora in the first act or so and the serious, open-minded Nora of the end of the last act. Similarly, actors are challenged to portray the full depth of Torvald's character. Many are tempted to play him as a slimy, patronizing brute, disregarding the character's range and genuineness of emotion and conviction.

A more obvious importance of A Doll's House is the feminist message that stunned the stages of Europe when the play was premiered. Nora's rejection of marriage and motherhood scandalized contemporary audiences. In fact, the first German productions of the play in the 1880s had an altered ending at the request of the producers. Ibsen referred to this version as a "barbaric outrage" to be used only in emergencies.

In large part, Ibsen was reacting to the uncertain tempo of the time; Europe was being reshaped with revolutions. The revolutionary spirit and the emergence of modernism influenced Ibsen's choice to focus on an unlikely hero, a housewife, in his attack on middle-class values. Quickly becoming the talk across Europe, the play succeeded in its attempt to provoke discussion. In fact, it is the numerous ways that the play can be read (and read it was‹the printed version of A Doll's House sold out even before it hit the stage) that make the play so interesting. Each new generation has had a different way of interpreting the book, from feminist critique to Hegelian allegory of the spirit's historical evolution. The text is simply that rich.

        

 

INFLUENCES OF THE PRODUCTION

• In my personal opinion, I believe that it is effortless to achieve success when doing an Ibsen play due to the fact his layout is so strict and the play itself cannot make sense outside of the certain era Ibsen demanded.

• The performance I saw in particular generally served the text well in the sense that it followed Ibsen’s rules rigidly in reference to the period in which it was set.

• This particular performance did differ slightly to what my first impressions of the play would be like. For one, I imagined Mrs. Linde to be a more powerful figure instead of the feeble one she was interpreted as in this performance. I also pictured the audience being in proscenium arch instead of in-the-round, which made the atmosphere seem that, so much more eclectic. In general I envisioned the production as being far more classical and formal, but instead, whilst still religiously adhering to Ibsen’s ground rules, they managed to refresh the play by experimenting with limited spacing and different angles.

• The qualities of this particular interpretation are manifested pivotally, in my opinion, through use of design. The mediums used during this production were far more influential to me than the acting or direction itself. I believe through use of visual channels, I, as an audience member, was able to grasp onto the exact approach the director was leaning to, without having to spend my complete focus on the acting.

• I believe improvements could be made to certain aspects of the acting during this interpretation, but all in all, I saw this production as successful in stressing is chosen perspective, which is that a woman’s status is the same nowadays as it was in the Victorian era.

• This interpretation can be referred to as artistically justifiable in the sense it managed to experiment with various genres outside of Ibsen’s Victorian locale.

• The director is essentially trying to communicate the similarities in social demands and attitudes between the period in which the play was set and present day.

• The most significant moments that stood out for me from the performance was when Nora danced the Tarantella, which showed such a great contrast not only visually but emotionally from the rest of the play which was quite slow and sombre. Another significant moment I remember was when Nora has her transformation of character and matured in what seemed to be a gliding instant. The image that remained in my memory was her facial expression which was a strange concoction of disgust at her husband, terrible sadness at realising the pointlessness of her life up until then and a peculiar sense of adrenaline or excitement of receiving the opportunity to dictate her own life.

• I believe the production set out to be informative in the sense that the director wanted to show her audience in general that everyone has enough strength in them to overcome oppression of any breed. It could also be interpreted as questioning because it questions the importance of women in present day, by comparing to women over 150 years ago.      

In A Doll's House, Ibsen paints a bleak picture of the sacrificial role held by women of all economic classes in his society. In general, the play's female characters exemplify Nora's assertion that even though men refuse to sacrifice their integrity, "hundreds of thousands of women have." In order to support her mother and two brothers, Mrs. Linde found it necessary to abandon Krogstad, her true but penniless love, and marry a richer man. The nanny had to abandon her own child to support herself by working as Nora's children's caretaker. As she tells Nora, the nanny considers herself lucky to have found the job, since she was "a poor girl who'd been led astray."

Though Nora is economically advantaged in comparison to the play's other female characters, she nevertheless leads a difficult life because society dictates that Torvald be the marriage's dominant member. Torvald issues decrees and condescends to Nora, and Nora must hide her loan from him because she knows Torvald could never accept the idea that his wife or any other woman had helped save his life. Furthermore, she must work in secret to pay off her loan because it is illegal for a woman to obtain a loan without her husband's permission. By motivating Nora's deception, Torvald's and society's attitudes leave Nora vulnerable to Krogstad's blackmail.

Nora's abandonment of her children can also be interpreted as an act of self- sacrifice. Despite Nora's great love for her children—manifested by her interaction with them and her great fear of corrupting them—she chooses to leave them. It seems that Nora truly believes in her statement that the nanny will be a better mother and that leaving her children is in their best interest.

Nora, Torvald, and Dr. Rank each express the belief that a parent is obligated to be honest and upstanding, because a parent's immorality is passed on to his or her children like a disease. In fact, Dr. Rank does have a disease that is the result of his father's depravity. Dr. Rank implies that his father's immorality—his many affairs with women—led him to contract a venereal disease that he passed on to his son, causing Rank to suffer for his father's misdeeds. Torvald voices the idea that one's parents determine one's moral character when he tells Nora, "Nearly all young criminals had lying mothers." He also refuses to allow Nora to interact with their children after he learns of her deceit; for fear that she will corrupt them.

Yet, the play suggests that children too are obligated to protect their parents. Nora recognized this obligation, but she ignored it, choosing to be with and sacrifice herself for her sick husband instead of her sick father. Mrs. Linde, on the other hand, abandoned her hopes of being with Krogstad and undertook years of labour in order to tend to her sick mother. Ibsen does not pass judgment on either woman's decision, but he does use the idea of a child's debt to her parent to demonstrate the complexity and reciprocal nature of familial obligations.

I neither agree nor disagree with the play’s intended message as I believe that not only have thing changed radically for women in the past 150 years, but I also believe that woman are still not classified as completely equal to men. This transgression will take a lot more time to prove successful as it is impossible to wish for a change in attitudes overnight. In some aspects, even today, women are still seen as second class, and this is the exact point the play was attempting to communicate. In other words this interpretation was trying to show that even though the appearance of the world may have changed drastically during the past 150 years; human beings still obtain the same strengths and weaknesses, attitudes to society and hierarchical mentality.