 |
Nora Her Majesty's Sat 11 March Nora is indeed a doll in a doll's house. Odiously chauvinistic hubby banker Torvald provides everything for his possession: nice digs, three kids, and plenty of dough. She is vacuously happy, ever more so as it was Nora who secretly provided some bridging finance during a bad patch by forging her father's signature on an IOU against his deceased estate. Director Thomas Ostermeier has adapted Ibsen's 'A Doll's House' and brought the SchaubŸhne am Lehniner Platz theatre company - kids, cast and goldfish - out of Berlin and into Adelaide for this Australian premiere. 'Nora' is set in the 21st Century in a rather used-looking apartment interior that could have been designed by Richard Meier sometime last century. The nine foot fish tank gets plenty of attention during the action. Nora is increasingly strained by the unraveling of her plot and stressed by the anticipation of her husband's by now well established reaction. Along the way, she is groped by all male cast - the husband's best friend, Dr Ranke, the whistle-blowing accountant, and of course, Torvald, when he doesn't have banking on his mind. Indeed, Nora's frequent lascivious behaviour invites sexual intercourse - Ostermeier somehow missed same-sex opportunities with Nora's mysteriously appearing old chum and the au pair as well. While you could drive a truck through the modern adaptation - it's the cheapest trick in the book to gratuitously introduce a handgun to raise the stakes, and the razor-sharp transition of obsequious Nora to Laura Croft incarnate - all is forgiven, and I mean completely, by the superb acting and directing. The ensemble's performance is a notch above what you normally see grace our stages, and that's not even counting a couple of highly physical and astonishing turns by Anne Tismer as Nora and Lars Eidinger as the dying doctor that rightly deserved spontaneous applause. The cut-away flat was build on a revolve - Ostermeier made scene changes a marvel and provided audience viewing from several angles. This lends a filmic quality to the production that is partly responsible for the young director's awesome reputation and for his appointment as co-artistic director of this prestigious German theatre company. While the dialogue is in German, subtitles are provided like on SBS. Wunderbar!  |
|
The latest issue available now!     |
All content copyright dB Magazine