A Doll’s House has been reconstructed at the Almeida with a new script by Anya Reiss. Torvald Helmer is an inept drug-addled financier who wants to sell his business to a wealthy American investor. But the deal is a dud. Without his knowledge, Torvald’s bossy wife, Nora, has stolen £860,000 from a client’s account to boost the firm’s apparent profitability and her crime is about to be disclosed by a bent accountant, Nils, who wants to blackmail her. She needs to get her hands on a small fortune fast.
This cumbersome and intricate back story is explained to us during the first half which is set over the Christmas holidays in the converted cellar of Nora and Thorvald’s beautiful London home. The cellar appears to be the family nerve centre. Nora welcomes guests down there and plies them with drinks from the double-doored fridge. She uses the space to store the presents and she sets up their Christmas tree opposite the washing machine. A strange place for a Christmas tree.
Without the ‘Ibsen’ label, this coarse, superficial yuppie melodrama would attract no interest from the public
Many other details feel wrong. Nora tells a friend that she stole the money to help Torvald beat his drug addiction but she doesn’t explain how her theft might have cut his appetite for coke. To solve her financial woes she dreams of a wealthy suitor who might offer her a huge chunk of money before dropping dead. And that’s exactly what happens. A rich neighbour, Dr Rank, reveals that his cancer has become terminal and he tries to assist Nora financially. But she turns his generosity down for some reason – perhaps because the play needs to keep going.
The Helmers are invited to a fancy-dress party and they spend lots of time discussing their costumes. Torvald goes as a skeleton while Nora tries on a kinky French maid’s outfit made out of purple nylon. Nils, the bent accountant, shows up dressed as an angry cyclist in a yellow anorak and a biking helmet but instead he decides to skip the party and gets entangled romantically with Nora’s best friend.
It’s hard to make sense of this version because everything is upside down. Ibsen’s play belonged to a world constructed around men’s interests, and the title encapsulated Torvald’s disdain for family life. But that society has fallen. Nora is a 21st-century woman who holds all the cards; she runs the household, organises the children, arranges the family budget and dominates her spineless, doting husband who obeys her like a needy puppy. Even his business affairs are a mystery to him because Nora has assumed the role of chief financial officer.
The narrative problems of the story come to a head during the famous closing scene where Nora walks out on Torvald and slams the door. In Ibsen’s day, this was a revolutionary act. But in our society, a married woman has no reason to abandon the emotional and physical possessions that give her status, power and security. Reiss fudges the issue. Nora and Torvald have a rowdy exchange in which they run around screaming abuse at each other and punching boxes full of Christmas presents. Then they enact a pastiche of Ibsen’s ending which feels superficial and unfelt. Romola Garai plays Nora as a spoilt weeping brat who doesn’t know what she wants. Tom Mothersdale’s Torvald is a clueless wimp with a beer gut. James Corrigan does his best to turn the creepy mistfit Nils into a likeable human being. All the characters pepper their talk with swear words which make them sound like frightened children trying to appear tough. Without the ‘Ibsen’ label, this coarse, superficial yuppie melodrama would attract no interest from the public.
Invisible Me is a trio of character studies about old crocks who want to reboot their lives. Lynn (Tessa Peake Jones) is a pensioner who earns a pittance as a hotel maid. She decides to become a porn star. Joining OnlyFans, she creates an alter ego, Miss Queenie, who specialises in ‘Victorian correction’. She makes money from a friendly older man who books her every Wednesday at 7 p.m. ‘Bit inconvenient,’ she says, ‘I like to watch the One Show.’ She meets a black Cockney taxi driver who claims to have been a punk with a green Afro in the 1970s. They go to a disco for elderly swingers where they befriend a clingy homosexual, Jack, who pines for his dead lover. Jack’s idea of fun is to loiter in the café at Waitrose casting lustful glances at handsome younger men while he tarries over a sausage casserole. His tactics work.
This is an amusing offbeat comedy that doesn’t dig deep or stretch its sweet-natured characters very far. Nothing is transformed and nothing is revealed. Properly marketed it could last for ever because theatreland will never run out of ticket-holders over 60. With a better title, it might find its audience more readily.
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