Romola Garai is a fine, fragile Nora in a contemporary London reboot of Ibsen’s drama that reminds me of the BBC’s compelling shares ‘n’ shagging series Industry. Writer Anya Reiss relocates the milieu to the financial world, where burnout through overwork or substance abuse is common and fortunes are suddenly made or lost. Apart from an element of late-onset narrative clumsiness, Joe Hill-Gibbins’s production feels both faithful to Ibsen and thrillingly new.
Nora here becomes the infantilised trophy wife of her university boyfriend Torvald Helmer (Tom Mothersdale), who has built a business – almost killing himself with a cocaine-induced heart attack in the process – that he is on the brink of selling as the year ends. A teeth-itching anxiety takes root as she splurges prematurely on an extravagant Christmas for their young children in their palatial but rented new home. It’s somehow even more tense to watch fretful Yuletide prep in sunny April.
Their life is an edifice of debt and deception as they chase an elusive payoff. The element of role-play in their marriage is signalled when Nora encourages Torvald to dress her in a flammably vulgar “sexy nurse” outfit for the neighbours’ fancy dress party. She promises to dance for him “in front of everyone”. The unease builds.
These are heedless people. The terminal illness of their hedonistically self-sabotaging doctor friend Petter (Olivier Huband), and his sustained crush on Nora, are things they treat too lightly. Another uni contemporary reappears: impoverished Kristine (Thalissa Teixeira), who married for money not love and ended up with neither. Nora twitters gauchely about how Kristine has lost weight: Torvald doesn’t even recognise her. Their carelessness towards another old acquaintance, James Corrigan’s Nils – an addict, ex-con and Torvald’s employee – proves unwise.
There’s a sense throughout of reality kept tenuously at bay. Designer Hyemi Shin sets the action in a featurelessly expensive basement connected to the outside world only by intercom (for some reason, I assume it’s in Notting Hill). These people experience each others’ lives through Instagram and Facetime their kids. Nora is harried by the thought that she might not be the picture perfect mum or hot wife. The secret of how she put Torvald through rehab and shored up their collapsing life is something she keeps in reserve for “when he doesn’t want to play with me [any more].”
Garai, an actress of great poise and focus, is here all a-jitter. Her Nora is fretful, nervy, prone to blurting out unwary truths and possessed of a billowy but self-conscious sensuality. It’s a wonderfully deep, layered performance and in the final speech where Nora is revealed to herself, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her.
Mothersdale’s Torvald has a similar energy but with a manic, ferrety edge. In a nice touch, he delivers one unusually frank speech about addiction from behind a Christmas tree, and another about his sexual fantasies with a hoodie pulled over his face: he can’t face Nora, or his own feelings.
Teixeira, Huband and Corrigan all underplay beautifully, which only ratchets up the tension more. Huband in particular has a woozy, handsy physicality, always teetering on the brink of something. As in his revelatory staging of Ibsen’s Ghosts at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in 2023, Hill-Gibbins likes to keep his cast mostly barefoot and off-balance. He’s matured from a shock-tactic showman into a director of great perception, with a particular flair for awkward atmospheres.
I suspect that Reiss wrote the last-minute revelation, which suddenly pins the Helmers’ fate to international events, long before the war in Iran was a twinkle in Donald Trump’s eye. Even so it feels awkward and phony – a bit of deus ex machina manipulation in a play that should end with characters confronting hidden truths and finding authenticity. That said, the concluding showdown between Nora and Torvald is brutally compelling and the final image is a devastatingly powerful one. Rupert Goold’s final season at the Almeida yields another gem.
The Almeida, to May 23; Almeida.co.uk
