Willful Ignorance and Histrionics in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (Young Vic, 2012)

Filmed live for Digital Theatre at the Young Vic in London on the 17-18th of July, 2012. 
Director: Carrie Cracknell.

It's hard to find a male role that calls for more willful ignorance than Torvald in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1876). His arrogance, paternalism and self-righteousness make his self-deceptions believable. Dominic Rohan's performance captures these qualities and personifies the type of man that does not ask himself about his financial situation and how he and his family can afford to go to Italy when he becomes ill from exhaustion; he lacks curiosity about his wife's activities and doesn't see her economizing or realize that she hides in her room to work to pay back a loan; he doesn't even seem to realize that he is married to a woman with a mind but instead seems content to believe that she thinks of nothing but shopping, his pleasure and running his house. He appears never to have asked her what she thinks or wants, and feels fine about ordering her not to eat candy and telling her she is dimwitted in a variety of ways. Yet, until the final scene when reality has finally broken through Nora's delusions none of this is brought to the fore. Instead the focus for censure is on Nora; on her shopping, her melodramatic storytelling and her lack of knowledge about the law.

Hattie Morahan's Nora is erratic and histrionic. Her emotions are excessive and her interactions with others tinged by a panicked concern for appearances. The acting style belongs to melodrama and in an otherwise realistic drama, this sets Nora apart and draws attention to her behavior as artificial. On the one hand, her over the top emotional responses signal her state of near panic at not being able to pay the loan she owes Krogstad and later that he will divulge her secret to Torvald. On the other hand, the melodramatic performance underscores that Nora is playing a role in her own life. The style of acting  works brilliantly with the play and its central theme of Torvald and Nora's conventional marriage as a social contract that cannot work without deception and self-deception. It is a marriage built on illusions and it requires self-delusion to work. Nora's friend, Christine, remarks at one point in the play that the secret Nora is keeping is wrecking their marriage, but it isn't the secret, it is the toxicity of an unspoken agreement to abide by ideological gender roles that do not work with flesh and blood people. Roles that cannot be anything but a performance because they require repression of any real desire in the service of a social ideal.

The filming of theatre is an art. The moving camera emphasizes the turning stage in the opening scene and when the scenes change. The interaction of movement, light and sound is very effective in communicating a time lapse. The stage turns, there is rhythmic music and the lighting shifts from light to dark and back again underscore the passing of time. It , also creates an imaginary bubble around the house. It is only as people enter the house that its enclosure is breached and Nora's and Torvald's carefully constructed world threatens to collapse. Through the door, Christine enters and declares that she is a widow whose husband left her with nothing, not even grief. She is happier on her own and models a different life free of the social contract. Through it, Krogstad enters and threatens to expose Nora’s secrets and tear down the facade that supports the contract. 

The camera movements are otherwise most successful when Nora dances the tarantella. Torvald tells her she looks like she is dancing for her life. She answers that she is. The camera follows her movement and encapsulates her in light and shadow  and captures her manic attempt to distract Torvald from reading Krogstad’s letter and finding out that she has deceived him. Yet the camera also captures how Morahan’s Nora is a time bomb that will either blow or implode.