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.
