A Doll’s House

Cast & Crew

Cast

Dr Rank
Nora Helmer
Torvald Helmer

Crew

Director

Seen by

Photographs

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Observations

  1. On 29th January 2020 at 2:35 a.m., Heather C Liston noted:

    I remember it well. Claire Bloom was transcendant.

  2. On 18th February 2023 at 12:57 a.m., hcorley noted:

    I saw this splendid production the week before it closed, in June 1973. London was experiencing a rare heat wave, the air was balmy, even humid, and at the midweek matinee, the rather meager audience arrived perspiring, fanning themselves and indifferent. Within minutes, we were transported into Christmas in Norway, the characters in muffs and woolens, warming hands as they entered underheated wintery rooms. The immediately established verisimilitude stood out in striking contrast to the languid summer day outside the Criterion (if memory serves, a smaller West End house, slightly below ground). Bloom and Blakely gave remarkably fresh performances, the stakes apparent and foreground. It was my first Doll’s House, against which I’ve compared all others.

    Bloom’s was – ultimately – an almost cerebral Nora, the polar opposite of the now iconic Janet Mcteer’s. But it had a compelling payoff: When Bloom finally dropped the performative optimism and calculated girlishness that (seemingly) held the family together, the emerging woman revealed was clearly brilliant and even an intellectual, and we glimpsed more than umbrage and retaliation: we saw a missed life. At age 21, I found that startling, so relevant to the times, early days of 2nd wave feminism, and it stayed with me through decades.

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