'A Doll's House' explores progress for women, and the lack thereof

Director Aarne Neeme has put together a splendidly straightforward production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House for Canberra Repertory. The play is often seen as an early piece on women’s rights, ending as it does with a resolution that is neither romantic nor violent but rather about the need for self determination.

Neeme thankfully leaves it firmly in late nineteenth century Norway on a cool blue and white doll’s house of a set by Andrew Kay, with nicely appropriate costumes by Helen Drum, letting audiences contemplate how far (or not) things may have come in the years since.

At the centre is the spirited Nora (Susannah Frith), ostensibly in a settled and happy marriage with the hard working Torvald (Robert de Fries), who treats her rather like a child.

They have three young children (Harrison Noble, Francis McNally and a very young Winnifred Hannan-Morrow) whose brief but gorgeous interruptions create an impression of settled family life. There are servants; the motherly nurse Anna (Heather Spong) cares for the children and the wide-eyed maid Helene (Elaine Noon) is there to open doors and take the coats. And there’s old family friend Dr Rank (Saban Lloyd Berrell), constantly in and out of the house.

But Nora is hiding a huge financial secret. In order to make possible a life saving stay in Italy for Torvald some years previously she had acted fraudulently to obtain a loan from the shifty Krogstad (Sam Hannan-Morrow). Her apparently spendthrift ways cover her steady repayments. Torvald thinks the money came from her father.

Things start to unravel when her childhood friend widowed Kristine (Alexandra Pelvin) arrives looking for work. Torvald is sacking Krogstad and looks happy to replace him with Kristine. It’s now clear that Nora’s secret will come out, particularly since there is a connection between Kristine and Krogstad.

There are strong and individualistic performances all round, from Lloyd Berrell’s touchily sad Dr Rank and Hannan-Morrow’s disturbingly flawed Krogstad to Spong’s calm Anna and the bustling Helene (Noon).

In the middle of all this is de Fries’ tightly controlled Torvald, oblivious to most things except his work and behaving toward Nora as if she were there to be both manipulated and indulged.

When Pelvin’s wonderfully pragmatic Kristine talks to Nora she sharply brings home to her the realities of a world where marriage does not necessarily bring security for women. And Spong as Anna, compelled by economic circumstance to give up her own child, calmly foreshadows something of what Nora will do at the end of the play.

As Nora, Frith is likable and believable with a warm sense of the character’s liveliness. The performance is perhaps still looking for more sense of transition to what Nora has become when she leaves but there’s no doubting the authority of the change itself.

This production of A Doll’s House is very well worth a visit.