Find out what critics have had to say about Joe Hill-Gibbins’s production, playing at the Almeida Theatre until the 23rd May.
The Guardian: *** “Still, there is innovation here and Reiss suggests that a more complicated version of Ibsen’s dream of female autonomy is needed for our age than a simple, shutting door. You can – just about – imagine a future in which Nora and Torvald agree to go to couples therapy to hash it all out. Modern indeed.”
WhatsOnStage: **** “Reiss’s writing is smart and sweary, entirely convincing in its depiction of Nora as a spoilt “yummy mummy”, who requires others to provide validation for her actions. She’s also altered Nora’s relationship with her children, who are never seen. She loves them, yet their dependence upon her feels like another bar in the cage that traps her.”
London Theatre.co.uk: *** “Occasionally, Reiss’s script slips into exposition. When Nils first raises Nora’s secrets, he repeatedly asks whether she remembers what happened – and surely, if she were carrying a lie so heavy, it would be at the forefront of her mind. Joe Hill-Gibbins’s production, however, is a hotbed of tension, thick with a sense of the inevitable waiting to erupt. Oddly, though, despite the flat having a functioning doorbell – used by the family at various points – Nils appears to clamber into the home through the audience, without ever having to be let in.”
Theatre & Tonic: *** “Still, this is a thoughtful, engaging A Doll’s House, alive to the pressures that define contemporary relationships. It understands, keenly, how love and money can become entangled—and how difficult it is to separate them. It just doesn’t quite decide what to do with that understanding once the door opens.”
Time Out: **** “But on the whole, this is superb, daringly avoiding the temptation to frame Nora as a simple troubled heroine, reframing the timeless story in vividly unsettling modern colours – a feverish parable for our age of anxiety.”
The Arts Desk: ” This two-hour sprint through the emotional bankruptcy of its lead characters left me unmoved and despondent: is this really all there is to say about wealthy people, that wanting money is intrinsically bad, and the people who pursue it are monsters? That may be true, but it’s not interesting.”
Broadway World: ** “There’s time, after a lot of soap opera style shouting, for a new ending with a few barbs thrown at disaster capitalists’ warped morality. Stepping over the homeless while walking past the Upper Street estate agents’ windows, it’s easy to see why a skewering of 2020s socio-economic policies is much needed. Just not this one.”
All That Dazzles: *** “This production of A Doll’s House boasts a sensational cast, and the writing certainly has its moments, but not every choice works. It feels like the story has been dissected and put back together in a way that is admirable yet uneven.”
West End Best Friend: **** “What it gains as a critique of capitalism, Reiss’ update on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House loses in its take on self-actualisation.”
The Spy in the Stalls: **** “Director Joe Hill-Gibbins ensures the drama builds cleanly. By the final confrontation, when Nora has no choice but to tell Torvald the truth, there is nothing left to hide behind. The resolution misfires somewhat – the tone all over the place – which leads to deflation rather than explosion.”
The Standard: **** “I suspect that Reiss wrote the last-minute revelation, which suddenly pins the Helmers’ fate to international events, long before the war in Iran was a twinkle in Donald Trump’s eye. Even so it feels awkward and phony – a bit of deus ex machina manipulation in a play that should end with characters confronting hidden truths and finding authenticity. That said, the concluding showdown between Nora and Torvald is brutally compelling and the final image is a devastatingly powerful one. Rupert Goold’s final season at the Almeida yields another gem.”
British Theatre Guide: “Anya Reiss’s riff on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House takes us to the performative world of the contemporary idle rich, where the central character Nora says people can “only be what the world allows us to be.” At one point, speaking of others, she asks, “how can I make them real people when I’m not real myself?””
The Reviews Hub: *** 1/2 “However, Anya Reiss’s smart and sweary update under Joe Hill-Gibbins’s steady hand is less concerned with women’s rights and agency and more an interrogation of the subject of money and how its pursuit makes us rotten to the core. This analysis is made clear in the short third act when we see how Torvald is just as trapped as Nora: the yet-to-be-slammed door could be an escape from their already-written lives for either of them.”
The Telegraph: *** “The Olivier winner returns to the Almeida in Anya Reiss’s updated Ibsen, but the reworked ending disappoints.”
To book tickets visit: https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/a-dolls-house-play/