BY JAMES WHITING
A Doll’s House
Bard on the Beach
Starring Penny Day, Nicholas Glendhill, Robert Gray, Matt Oxley, Shannon Thomas, and Patricia Rowling (actor/director/producer)
Bondi Pavilion Theatre, 20 June
A woman approaches the wide, arching forestage of the Bondi Pavilion Theatre. Behind her is a brightly painted set: a living room. In place of doors, black stage curtains corner her inside. She bends down in a smiling, energetic chat with her three children (eerily invisible). Is she a mother, or is it just an act? She is Nora in Bard on the Beach’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and she is performing as if her life depended on it.
This was a frenzied Nora, maintaining a restless and brittle performance of wife, mother, and lady of the household. Shannon Thomas filled the role with a manic energy including careening giggles and super-charged nibbling on macaroons that sent crumbs flying. Her Nora was every inch the actress, trapped so tightly in a routine that spectators could see the growing cracks in her smile. In moments, such as when first cornered by Robert Gray’s reluctantly vengeful Krogstad, there were hints of another register of Nora’s character; almost catatonic in the awareness of her precarious identity. In the third act, both registers surprisingly came not to a sense of clarity for Nora in her ultimate decisions, but perhaps a new sense of confusion in face of an unknown future.
Stepping in and out of Nora’s confining living room were a well-discharged array of supporting characters. Patricia Rowling, who also directed the production, gave a clear, restrained and sensitive reading of Mrs Linde. Her formality, reserve, and misty-eyed wistfulness brought out a marked counterpoint to Nora’s teetering desperation. Matt Oxley was suitably grandiose as the idealising Helmer, and Nicholas Gledhill brought charm and pathos to Dr. Rank.
Nora’s children, a powerful feature of this storied play, were intriguingly evoked through sound effects and both Nora’s physical and textual references to them. One effect of this choice was an emphasis on Nora as a child herself. This left spectators with an uneasy question, unanswered by the production: Is Nora childish or rather childlike?
