A Doll's House

It is always dangerous to go and see one of your favourite texts performed, escpecially for the first time. You walk in with a set idea in your head of what it should look like and the production almost never conforms to your opinion of the text. This reveiw should probably be read with that in mind.

I went to see GRADs' A Doll's House on Saturday night and I loved it. The production was slick and assured and despite the rather static nature of the text, the pace seldom waned. When it did I suspect it was the fault of the actors losing their focus for a second, in an extremely intense text and having to regain their positions on stage. The acting, particularly from the two lead was superb and the part of Thomas could well have been written for Gary T Saunders. (I hope the ladies who were waiting for you in the carpark afterwards did not hurt you too much Gary.)

But I wouldn't be me without some gripes. Most of them completely out of the control of the actors or the director. The main one was the staging. The Dolphin stage is lovely and big but I felt it really dwarfed the action, particularly in view of the rather minimalist set. It gave the impression of a house of mansion proportions, which this house was certainly not supposed to be. It also made it impossible to convey the claustrophobic feel I felt should have begun to pervade the end of the first half. The actor who played Nora did her best to fill up the space but I felt it was a feat beyond even her considerable talents.

My second gripe was that there appeared to be a few different acting styles on stage at the same time. This detracted from the script and put at least one actor in danger of looking OTT and another in danger of disappearing all together. Also I felt that Dr Rank just did not look sick. I felt a stick may have been in order in veiw of his spinal condition and increasing difficulty in walking might have lead nicely into his exit.

I would like to make special mention of the pivitol Dean Schulz. His character was instrumental to the play and was underplayed beautifully. He really needed to be a man who was not evil, not a villian, just a man desperate and out of options. It would have been so easy to overplay it, but Dean had perfect balance.

My last comment is on the change of the period of the play, bringing it up to Post WWII. I didn't think it was possible to make an Ibsen text most poingant but I think the period change did it. A writer can truely be called great if his or her script still has resonance over 100 years after it is written, but A Dolls House can still be called a social comment. The change of period did nothing to detract from the revolutionary nature of the lead charcter and her actions, but it did manage to make the play "touchable". Women floating around in big dresses are easy to dismiss just as characters, but I'm sure many of us saw our mothers or our grandmothers up there on the stage and identified almost to the point of pain with Noras plight.

The bottom line is (after that long and exhausting diatribe), it is very rare that you walk out of a play determined to see everything else you can just in case one of them may top the experience you've just had. To quote from the person I went to see "A Doll's House" with (who jokingly dismissed it as feminist twaddle as soon as the curtain went down, at least I think he was joking), "Well, that was a reason to go see ameteur theatre."

Well done again Grant and crew.