Perhaps the best thing to do with a play that is approaching its 150th birthday and still earning a place on contemporary stages is simply to get out of the way. Unless you have a Jamie Lloyd-style take and Jessica Chastain on speed dial, there probably isn’t a good enough reason to add bells and whistles to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
Just do the play and trust there’s a reason it has lasted a century and a half – that appears to be the unifying principle behind this production, which opens the Crucible’s autumn season. Sheffield favourite Chris Bush, fresh from the success of Standing at the Sky’s Edge, is the adapter here, with Elin Schofield in the director’s chair.
