If it is a mark of classic works for theatre that they speak forcefully to audiences across time and place, it is a mark of maturity and depth of talent in a company that it rises to the challenge of making that happen for a different world. The Court’s current production meets the measure of both. 

The play, first staged in 1879, reflected the trend for serious theatre to deal realistically with everyday settings and characters without heroic fantasy or tall tales. In dramatising the fate of Nora Helmer, then, A Doll’s House could be seen as a clear-eyed view of a middle-class woman’s break for freedom from the conventional role of wife and mother, and indeed from her own perception of what that role should be. One can be hopeful that in 2024 expectations have changed.

A contemporary production, therefore, must be able to focus on the wider human truth that self-worth has to be earned and that honesty, though often painful, is a key to the business. The given circumstances of the play – that Nora is doll-wife to a newly promoted bank manager, and is about to be caught out in a rash act of fraud, before her helplessly cosseted world implodes – cannot change. Manipulating the lens for a contemporary eye and ear is the major challenge for assured director Melanie Luckman. The language of Christopher Hampton’s crisp version certainly helps, as does sound design from Amy Straker and Matt Short, cueing Nora’s changing inner state.

Production values are generous. Julian Southgate’s set provides an authentically nineteenth century Norwegian living room of the prosperous Helmer family, laid out with accomplished design detail. Especially significant is the superbly rendered doorway, through which Nora will make her final exit. The fancy plastered ceiling too, echoes the dolls’ house effect of her decorated existence.

This telling authenticity extends to costume design from Pam Jones and Pauline Laws, with role and character subtly supported. Lighting design from Jo Bunce creates the world in view, surely drawing us to 1879 and the Helmers’ comfortable life. At one point, Nora’s rehearsal of a desperate tarantella – choreographer, Hillary Moulder – for a fancy dress party performance, fuses design elements from all creatives into an electrifying sequence, echoing Nora’s own now panicked state.

The cast then, is working in a splendidly accurate world, but linking us to its timeless message through some emotional engagement is a significant test of insight and skill for director and actors.

Solid applause confirms their success. All characters, from the minor roles of servants and children to critically important key players contribute to the spell.

As a catalyst pair in plot development and its changing impact on Nora, Hester Ullyart’s Kristine Linde and Cameron Douglas’s Nils Krogstad are never less than impressive, as is Roy Snow as her last hope, wealthy Dr Rank. 

But it is the implications of the changing central relationship between an awakening Nora and her complacently patronising husband Torvald, which provide the undeniable sting of the play. Both characters are wrenched free from their familiar fabricated world with its wad of assumptions. As Torvald, Jonathan Price reveals the ultimate shallowness of his supposedly moral convictions, with fine control.

It is the doll wife Nora however, whose bid for personal space and freedom delivers the real punch of the production. Acushla-Tara Kupe takes considerable risks in the first half with overtly overstated frivolity and flattery and unrestrained ‘modern’ physicality, but by the time her stunned realisation of the truth of her position dawns, the contrast in her altered presence is all the more compelling.

The Court Theatre, about to relocate next year to its new inner-city site, can be well pleased that aspirations flourishing in 1972, when the play was directed by founding Co-Director Yvette Bromley, are still so confidently met in its final season at The Shed.

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