'A Doll's House' - AO5

‘A Doll’s House’ - 2013 production

Director?

Artistic interpretation (2 points)?

Effect of choices?

Jamie Lloyd

• Set is minimalistic and dark, presenting the domestic world as deliberately cold and sterile rather than warm and comfortable

• Nora is mainly sat throughout the play, showing her lack of authority. At the end she stands up to Torvald physically and metaphorically

The audience is never invited to believe in the happiness of the marriage, making Nora’s awakening feel less like a revelation and more like a conformation of something always visible

‘A Doll’s House’ - 2019 production

Director?

Artistic interpretation (3 points)?

Tanika Gupta

• Re-locates the action to British colonial India, reimagining Nora as a Bengali woman. She must navigate not only the expectations of her marriage but also the racial hierarchies of empire

• Set represents layering of worlds, blending the intimate domestic interior of the original with visual signifiers of colonial Bengal and domestic objects that simultaneously suggest home and occupation

• Costumes work to highlight cultural identity as a form of constraint, with traditional dress functioning as a marker of the world Nora both belongs to and is suffocated by

‘A Doll’s House’ - 2025 production

Director?

Artistic interpretation (4 points)?

Stef Smith

• Reframes the drama in three different time periods: the fight for women’s suffrage in 1918, second-wave feminism (e.g. the Abortion Act) in 1968 and the height of the #MeToo movement, grounding Nora’s domestic imprisonment at specific political moments

• Core plot remains recognisable but distributes the events across all three women

• The husband, Thomas, is played by a single actor across all three periods, suggesting that male power requires little adaptation to survive across generations

• Each of the three Noras leaves separately and the play turns its attention to what comes after, asking not whether leaving is possible but whether leaving is truly enough

SOCIETY: Birch

‘A Doll’s House’ challenged “deeply embedded concepts of marriage, the relationship between …

the sexes and our responsibilities to each other”

SOCIETY: Ibsen, Notes for a Modern Tragedy (1879)

“There are two kinds of moral laws, two kinds of conscience, one for men, and one, quite different, for women. They don’t understand each other, but in practical life, …

woman is judged by masculine law, as though she weren’t a woman, but a man”

SOCIETY: Caird

“The economic independence of woman is the first condition to free marriage. She ought not to be …

tempted to marry, or to remain married for the sake of bread and butter”

NATURALISM: Clement Scott, conservative critic writing in the Daily Telegraph, 8th June 1889

“We do not honestly believe that those theories as expressed in ‘The Doll’s House’ would ever find …

favour with the great body of English playgoers”

NATURALISM: Ibsen, in a letter written to August Lindberg, Swedish actor, in 1883

“The play’s effect is dependent, to a large degree, on the audience members thinking that …

they sit and listen and watch something which is happening out there in real life”

NATURALISM: Sophie Duncan

“‘A Doll’s House’ disrupted but also drew on …

19th century drama”

NATURALISM: Dinah Birch

“this is not a polemical rant, its an …

extraordinarily powerful and skilfully plotted play”

FEMINISM: Birch

“His women were not idealised. They are …

fully realised human beings and sometimes, indeed, very destructive human beings”

FEMINISM: Ibsen, speaking at an 1889 gala evening organised by Norwegian Association for the Cause of Women

“I must decline the honour to have consciously worked for the cause of women. I am not even quite clear what the cause of women really is. For me it has always appeared to be the cause of …

human beings. My task has always been to portray human beings”

FEMINISM: Hugh Suttfield, British journalist (June 1895)

“The woman of the new Ibsenite neuropathic school is …

not only mad but does her best to drive others mad too”

FEMINISM: Joan Templeton (1989)

“[the play] has nothing to do with … . [Nora’s exit is a metaphor for] … …”

the sexes. … individual freedom

OUTCOME: Duncan

“Ultimately, both Nora and Torvald are …

victims of the society that created them”

TORVALD: Duncan

“Torvald’s accusation that Nora has inherited her father’s faults …

bookends the play”

TORVALD: Sophie Duncan

“[Torvald’s] lexis of illness and disability reflects the late Victorian drive to pathologise women’s rebellion as…

abnormal and unhealthy, reducing everything to hormones and hysteria”

NORA: Clement Scott (1889)

“Nora is …

Torvald’s baby wife”

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES: Halvdan Koht (Ibsen’s biographer)

“exploded like a …

bomb”

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES: Ibsen (regarding the revised ending for German actress, Hedwig Niemann-Rabbe)

“a barbaric act of …

violence against the text”

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES: August Strindberg, writing on the impact of ‘A Doll’s House’ in his book, ‘Getting Married’

“Marriage was revealed as being …

far from a divine institution”

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES: Erich Bogh, Danish playwright about ‘A Doll’s House’ (1879)

“It is beyond memory a play so simple in its action and so …

everyday in its dress made such an impression of artistic mastery”

MODERN RESPONSES: Tore Rem

“the ‘slamming of the door shut’ is really a key …

turning point in European theatre history”

MODERN RESPONSES: A.S. Byatt, The Guardian, 2 May 2009

“Every time I read the play I …

find myself judging Nora with less and less sympathy”