A DOLL’S HOUSE Connaught Theatre, Union Place, Worthing, Wednesday, September 24 and Thursday, September 25 Starts 7.30pm, 2pm matinee Thurs, tickets £16/£14. Call 01903 206206

 

BACK in July Baroness Hale, the UK's only female Supreme Court judge called for more gender equality across the legal system, adding it would improve the quality of justice.

Director Michael Woodwood says more than 130 years ago Henrik Ibsen was talking about the different view women take on law in his classic play A Doll's House.

“Nora sees saving her husband's life as one of the most important things to do for her family,” he says. “But the law says she can't borrow money or have her own finances. Her own view of the law is slightly different.”

Woodwood is bringing a new translation of the classic play to Worthing next week as part of UK Touring Theatre's second national tour.

Named by the United Nations as the world's most performed play in 2006, A Doll's House follows the apparently naive Nora as she prepares for Christmas with her children and recently promoted bank manager husband Torvald.

When one of Torvald's employees Nils Krogstad is threatened with losing his job after being caught committing fraud he blackmails Nora to use her influence so he can keep his position.

If she doesn't Krogstad says he will reveal the illegal loan Nora obtained from him for an Italian holiday to help Torvald recover from ill-health several years before. As the action unwinds Nora's view of society and her husband is irrevocably changed.

“Nora is one of the great parts for an actress alongside Hedda Gabbler,” says Woodwood, who has cast Felicity Rhys in the lead role, opposite Adam Redmayne as Torvald.

“The play is her awakening of what is happening to her as she tries to hold their relationship together - this slow realisation that she's just a possession and her husband is more concerned about his honour than what his wife has done for him.”

Woodwood's stage design for this touring production is designed to mirror the action of the play.

“We have hanging doors and hanging picture frames with no walls as such,” he says. “The set isn't just fixed in one place - we wanted to give the idea of moving between rooms.

“The house is a metaphor for the marriage - as the house starts to fall apart so does the marriage. The production moves from order into chaos, and the music moves from harmony into disharmony.”

Nora's final act in the play was so shocking to contemporary European society that in one infamous German production leading actress Hedwig Raabe refused to play the role unless Ibsen wrote a different ending. Woodwood believes there is still a taboo today - but A Doll's House reflects a time when a woman had to stay in a relationship as there was no way they could have their own money, property or rights.

“We still live in a man's world and I think a lot of women would agree with that,” he says.

“Even in the western world where a woman's rights are quite well advanced there are still a lot of women who don't get equal pay, and it is men who make the laws.”