Lady Inger at The Space

I am not a great Ibsen fan but I keep going to see his plays! That is because they are good enough, in their way, and I still feel that it is an important body of work to consume for anyone who takes the theatre at all seriously.

I am, however, something of a fan of the production company ottisdotter and of small quirky theatres in out of the way places, theatres like The Space on the Isle of Dogs. My only other visit to The Space was back in 2016 (!) to see another ottisdotter production, Emilla Galotti.

All that was more than enough to get me to invest £12.5 in a ticket.

I took the opportunity of being on the far side of London to make something of a day of it and having first seen Vincent River at Greenwich Theatre I walked through the Greenwich foot tunnel and through Mudchute Park and Farm to get to The Space.

My timing was good and I was able to enjoy a decent pint of beer and a good cheese sandwich in the nicely quirky bar upstairs before the show. It's things like that which make theatre going even more than a treat than it normally is.

The theatre space is a hall and this was set up with two banks of seats, in something like a diamond pattern, around the performance area where the only props on view were a table and two chairs. 

I sat in the middle and took this photo from the entrance during the interval.

The play started off as a geopolitical drama. Lady Inger is partly based on a true story in 1500s Norway where she is a widow living in an isolated castle off the coast of Trondheim and is the last remaining vestige of Norway’s national identity. She has to contend with occupying Swedes and untrustworthy Danes.

Some visitors come to her castle proposing alliances, making threats and suggesting husbands for her daughter. It was good ebb and flow stuff and despite knowing nothing of the history I was hooked.

I got another beer in the interval.

In the second half the political intrigue and tensions got closer to home and both Lady Inger's daughter and a son became heavily involved in other people's plans.

The play ended with Lady Inger screaming on the floor.

Kristin Duffy as Lady Inger was a powerful presence throughout. Ivan Comisso also impressed as Nils Lykke a Danish nobleman. The other cast members were not eclipsed and it was a skilful performance. 

Lady Inger was set in a time and place I did not know but the themes were familiar enough and the story  was gripping. Not an easy watch but a rewarding one.

The Lady from the Sea at Donmar Warehouse was clinical and cold

I keep going to see Ibsen plays in the hope that I will understand what the magic is and start to appreciate them more but it has been a mixed journey so far and while some productions have been reasonable none have been exceptional and others have been disappointing. This was one of the reasonable ones.

It was a late decision to go and see it. I had a free evening, had seen decent reviews (I do appreciate that theatres only share the good ones) and there was a lone free seat in the middle of the Circle (A37) so I forked out £30. It was a good seat, even if the woman next to me spent the whole evening trying to eat sweets quietly and failing.

This was a new version of The Lady from the Sea and the biggest change was moving the Norwegian characters with their Norwegian names to the Caribbean. Not sure why. I had only seen the play once before so I did not expect to catch many of the differences.

The Lady herself was played with much aplomb by Nikki Amuka-Bird and the rest of the cast did a fine job too. I particularly enjoyed Ellie Bamber as Hilde, the Lady's younger step-daughter, and that have been because as the young cynic she was the most believable character.

I liked the set too with it's simplicity and its quirky water tank that contained a model of an island with a submerged boat and houses.

The acting and production were unable to rescue a play in which the characters are not believable and the story does nothing. In the best part of two uninterrupted hours there were no wow moments and there were no characters that I cared for, except (possibly) the eldest step-daughter and the play was not about her.

The Lady from the Sea was well constructed but lacked any emotion. It was clinical and cold. I admired the professionalism of the production and enjoyed the story but it left no last impression.

Hedda Gabler at National Theatre was stunning

This picture is so good I almost do not need to say anything else about the play.

Ruth Wilson plays the title role and she is an established star thanks to Luther and The Affair. Her name and face are the crowd-pullers in this production. She is the main reason that I wanted to see the play too because she impressed me mightily when I saw her in Anna Christie in 2011.

The poster also hinted at a minimalist production, in marked contrast to the last time that I saw Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic in 2012 when it was played as a period drama. That approach worked but generally I prefer sparse productions.

Hedda Gabler was obviously going to sell well (it is completely sold out) and so I took advantage of a colleague's Amex card and shared love of theatre to get him to book tickets a day or two before general booking opened. The keen NT members had already feasted on the best seats and we had to settle for Circle Row D. That was fine if a little unusual not to be in the first row.

The stage was set as one large bare-walled room with just a desk, sofa, piano and a few chairs.

As is the fashion, there were people on the stage when we entered, including, it transpired, Ruth/Hedda herself at the piano with her back to us.

Having people on stage but not in the scene was a technique used a few time throughout the play and it worked, as it had the last time I saw that trick used.

Another nice trick was the repeated piano motif, the introduction to Nina Simone's version of Wild is the Wind, that was used in the same way that film music is used to set the mood.

The clever thing about these tricks was the way that they were almost invisible at the time and it is only thinking about the play afterwards that I can begin to understand their importance. Being clever for clever's sake is always a risk, and I think some plays do that, but everything about the design and direction of this production was spot on.

The main beneficiary of all this was Ruth Wilson who had all the space she needed to show us her interpretation of Hedda Gabler, Hedda who could be funny, spiteful, demanding, sultry, morose and stroppy. The incident with the flowers, hinted at in the poster, was brilliant and typical.

The ending, like the three hours before it, was stunning and a fitting end to a fantastic production. I knew the story so knew what was going to happen but I was surprised by the manner in which it happened, the reactions to it and then the way the play itself closed. There is often a "that must be the end" feel to plays and I like to be among the first (or THE first) person to clap, but not this time and the ambiguity added to the experience.

I've not mentioned Ibsen yet and I am not sure how much of this production came directly from his words and how much was reinterpretation. I am usually uncertain on Ibsen (as I find some of his characters too simple) but there was no doubt this time.

This Hedda Gabler is one that I would gladly see again. It was that good.

The Master Builder at the Old Vic

The poster tells you why I went to see The Master Builder; it has the impressive names Fiennes, Ibsen and Hare on it.

The Ibsen name was the more problematic of the three and it had taken me some effort (two viewings and one listening in a short period) to appreciate Ghosts. But The Master Builder was just the sort of play that I should be seeing and The Old Vic was just the sort of place to see it.

It's an expensive theatre, certainly when compared to most of the ones that I go to, so I headed up to the top level, as usual, and claimed my place in the Lilian Baylis Circle Seat A24 for an acceptable £30. The view there was fine, as the photo shows. The leg room was somewhat limited but not really a problem except for when trying to get past people to get to my seat.

The Master Builder of the play is an architect, Halvard, who had risen to become the leading builder in his locality. In rising he had trampled over some people, the son of one of whom, Ragnar,Apple Store now worked for him as a junior. Also working for him was that man's intended fiancee, Kaia. Halvard and Kaia had a thing going on which Halvard's wife, Aline, suspected.

Playing the steadying influence was the Chekovian Doctor Herdal and making everything even more complicated was Hilde, a pretty young woman from a nearby town who had come to visit Halvard in response to a promise he had made to her to build castles in the air when she was a young girl ten years earlier.

The play then wrestled with several psychological ideas including Halvard's relationships with the young women, his legacy and his relationship with God, another Master Builder. Pointedly, Halvard was addressed as The Master Builder throughout.

The tension in the plot came from Halvard's possible futures which included scandal, contented retirement, overthrow by a young contender, success and failure. Elements of the past were uncovered which helped to explain somethings and to darken the mood further. Halvard was, to put it simply, trapped between his joyless wife and the childish dreams of Hilde.

My frustration with Ibsen is that there was clearly a lot going on in all of the relationships and I felt like I was missing a lot of the detail, rather like going to a party where you do not know anybody else there, things were said but meanings were missed. I am sure that I would appreciate The Master Builder more on a second or third viewing but I would have liked to have got more from the first.

The other thing that slightly spoiled it for me was the way that Fiennes portrayed Halvard. He spent a lot of time standing up with his hands on his hips and I simply could not get the image of Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby out of my mind. Even Halvard's waistcoat seemed to be a homage to Rigsby's cardigan.

Those gripes aside, it was still a decent enough play and I thought that Sarah Snook was excellent as the playful Hilde. There was plenty in the characters and their stories to get to grips with and it was an enthralling couple of hours of drama.

Intimate and engaging performance of The Feast at Solhaug at Baron's Court Theatre

I am still not a great Ibsen fan but I appreciate that there is something there, especially after trying Ghosts three times in a year, and so an Ibsen play was always going to catch my attention, even if I then did not go to see the show after all.

The Feast at Solhaug had a lot more going for it that just Ibsen's name; it had never been performed in English before and was on at Baron's Court Theatre which I had not been to before despite it being so close. And it was only £14 which is ridiculously cheap for any theatre.

I had changed trains at Baron's Court many times before but had never explored the area before so I took the opportunity to do so, combined with looking for somewhere to eat. The area around the theatre was full of mansion blocks, much like Kennsington but not quite as posh. Wandering around I came across Queen's Club, famous for its pre-Wimbledon tournament, which I did not know was in the area.

The quest for food did not go that well and I ended up back at Curtains Up, the imaginative name from the pub above the theatre. It was Boat Race day but that means nothing to me so I had not factored it into my calculations. This was something of a mistake as a few hours after the event the pub was still packed and the tables were covered with the evidence of a good time being had by all. Luckily I was able to find a table and to get some food. And a beer.

The theatre was downstairs and it was not obvious where we were meant to queue, or if we were even meant to queue. I checked every few minutes and panicked slightly when the queue appeared and immediately had about ten people in it. I joined them.

Once allowed inside I saw that the theatre was in the old beer cellar and nothing had been done to hide this. There was seating on three side but the best seats in front of the stage had gone by the time that I got in (the usual few people, many coats situation) so I went to the right of the stage where a front row seat was still available.

One of the early arrivals who claimed many seats was an annoying woman in a bright white dress. It was hard to take a decent picture of the stage with this white dress in constant motion so eventually I settled for this one with her in the top-right corner.

The Feast at Solhaug was very different from every other Ibsen play that I had seen in that it was a brash historical drama rather than a subtle contemporary one. It was more like William Shakespeare than Tennessee Williams.

The beer cellar suited the play well as it already looked medieval in style and was built from crude stone.

At the centre of the drama were a lord and lady celebrating their third wedding anniversary, though he was celebrating it more earnestly and vigorously than she was.

The an old flame from her past arrived and she rekindled her feelings for him but he fell for her younger sister, as did the king's sheriff who was chasing the flame for serious crimes committed against the king. This stew of passions and jealousies was stirred with alcohol until it boiled over messily, as it was always going to do.

The complexity of the relationships and the number of main characters meant that the ending was nicely unpredictable. Some people died, some had other bad things happen to them and one couple managed to live happily ever after. I've found other Ibsen plays to end weakly and unrealistically but that was most definitely the case here.

The acting was good throughout and the intimate setting helped us to feel the deep emotions that the characters were wrestling with. The actor who made the most impact on me was Lucy Pickles as Margit, Lady of Solhaug, and that was probably because she had the more difficult decisions to make, spent more time on stage and was rather pleasing on the eye.

The Feast at Solhaug was a lovely play neatly presented, and it helped that it was below a reasonable pub not that far from home. All in all it was a very pleasant evening.

Ibsen's Ghosts at Trafalgar Studios

My interest in Ibsen's Ghosts was peaked by a recent radio adaptation but it took an offer from Hot Tickets to get me to see the same production on stage.

My "no thinking required" price-point is around £20, above that needs some justification, so an offer for a seat at £16 with a face value of £50 was an easy one to accept. I guess there must have been some returns as I was able to get a seat in the second row (B26), albeit somewhat to the left of centre.

I had only been to Trafalgar Studios a couple of times, and not always to the main studio either, so I had forgotten what it is like. It is a little odd.

There is no gap between the seats in the front row, they are bright red bench seats with high backs, the front rows are curved slightly at the ends {somewhere between "]" and ")"} and are nicely raked. I was in one of the curves which meant a little less space that usual but I was helped considerably by the no-show in an adjacent seat. This also got me past the problem of the tall woman in the front row.

The set was nicely done and nicely used.

For most of the time it was a normal reception room but the back wall was translucent so, with the correct lighting, we could see through to the dining room and the front door. I am sure that it was no coincidence that the people in that room had a ghostly appearance.

The story was what it is. Ghosts is very clunky in places, e.g. the belaboured conversations about insurance and then about candles, but there also a few points of solid drama - not quite twists but unexpected developments none the less.

It also lacks somewhat for characters. The main players are either thinly portrayed or are not that nice. It was difficult to feel any sympathy for any of them despite none of them being particularly bad people and some particularly bad things happened to them. This was a fault of the play and not the acting which was superb throughout. A special mention goes to Jack Lowden as the ailing Oswald who is most punished by the ghosts of the past.

The big surprise for me was the ending. Not only was this markedly different from the other stage version that I saw earlier this year but it also seemed to be different from the radio version of this production!

The play ends on the dilemma Helene Alving faces on how to deal with her son. At the Rose it was deliberately ambiguous but slightly positive, on the radio it was ambiguous but negative and here she made a clear decision and it was very negative. On the stage this was shown in her actions so I will have to check the radio version again to see what difference, if any, there was in the words.

I still have misgivings about Ghosts as a play, and I do not expect to see it ever again, but this production made the most of what it had to play with and was thoroughly entertaining. I am glad that I got an offer on it though.

Forgiving Ibsen's Ghosts

In addition to going to the theatre regularly I also listen to the BBC Radio Drama of the Week podcast which picks just one play each week from the many broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4.

As luck would have it, a recent choice was Ibsen's Ghosts in a production taken directly from the West End. I had not enjoyed a recent staging of the play but was prepared to give the radio version a chance, and I am glad that I did.

One of the features of Ghosts is that there is next to no physical action, apart from a few exits and entrances, so it is an obvious choice for the radio. In fact I think that it worked better as a radio play and hearing it through earphones made it even more intense.

I do not know whether it was a second watching/listening of the play, this adaptation or because it was on the radio rather than the stage but I picked up a lot more of the fine details of the story this time and that certainly helped me to appreciate it.

And because this was radio there was no interval. The stage version that I saw had an interval and I though that it broke the flow of the play but the stage version that this radio play was based on does not have an interval.

I would still not go as far as to say that Ibsen's Ghosts is a classic, or even that it is a favourite of mine, but this radio version did a lot to improve its reputation in my eyes and I might even go and see it on stage again.

Ibsen's Ghosts at the Rose Theatre

I think that it is fair to say that my experiences with both Ibsen's plays and the Rose Theatre's productions has been a little mixed so it was something of a leap of faith to go and see Ghosts at the Rose.

Other people obviously had the same trepidations and the theatre, though by no means empty, was by no means full on this Saturday night either. Which was a shame, I may not be the Rose's biggest fan but I want it to succeed.

The stage was surprisingly set as, er, a normal stage and the Rose's thrust stage had been disguised as a standard proscenium stage. One of my criticisms of the Rose has been that it has not made enough of its unique design (unlike, say, the Orange Tree which does) and to see one of its own productions presented in this was was a little sad.

The set was a simple room with a front door to the outside and another to the rest of the house. The room was sparsely set despite being a wealthy person's house.

The story centres around a widow Helen Alving, her son Oswald and her maid Regina Engstrand with contributions from Helen's pastor and Regina's father.

The play opened with Regina and her father. Both spoke in broad Scottish accents which suggested that the play had been moved from Norway to Scotland, which could have worked, but this was not the case so either the accents were an attempt to indicate that they were working class or they were just a mistake, assuming that both actors were capable of doing other accents.

The ghosts were provided by the dead Captain Alving and the consequences of his actions. As we listened to the conversations between the players we learnt more about these and a simple situation became increasingly complex and unpleasant.

After an hour and something we had an unexpected and unnecessary break. I've really grown to like plays that do not stop except for when the story or the staging demands it. This was not one of the cases and the break just dissipated the drama that Ibsen had been building.

In the shorter second half those drams coalesced in to two crises that hit the Alving very hard. The play ends with Helen facing the difficult choices of murder, suicide, both or neither. What happens next is left to us to decide and I felt cheated by this. As with other Ibsen plays, great tension had been built steadily from a quiet beginning only for the end to throw all the good work away with either an unrealistic ending or no ending at all.

I might have been happier if I had left at the interval.

The story apart, the play had lots of good points, including the acting, and right up to the end it was gripping entertainment.

A Doll's House at the Duke of York's

Ibsen and I do not always get on that well, which is a shame as theatres keep putting his plays on and I keep going to them despite my previous experiences.

They have not been all bad, A Doll's House at the Arcola was wonderful and Love's Comedy at the Orange Tree was fine. The productions that I felt misfired were the more mainstream The Lady from the Sea at the Rose and Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic.

When I've been disappointed I've felt that the weakness was in the play and it may be that the fringe theatres are more willing to play around with this to make it work.

I felt that this version of A Doll's House suffered from the script and lacked creditability as a result, whereas the modern interpretation at the Arcola was hauntingly beautiful.

I decided to see this production, having avoided it twice at the Young Vic, because of the reviews and I let them sway me over having seen it just a couple of years earlier.

A Doll's House is a one-trick pony. It tells the story of Nora Helmer, apparently happily married, with three children, to a banker who is rising up the ranks. But she has a dark secret in her past, to do with money, and that secret is bubbling towards the surface.

The climax of the play comes when the secret finally emerges and we have the husband's strong reaction and then the wife's decisive reaction to that.

The build towards the climax is slow, tense and believable but, just like in the The Lady From the Sea, the climax itself is rushed and unconvincing.

The cast make the most of what they have to work with and I have no complaints about their performances. The set was good too with a simple rotation takings us to different parts of the house.

There was much to appreciate in the play and in this production, it is just that I felt that having taken us skilfully towards the ending the play then took a different direction and ended on a weak note. If I ignore the last five minutes then everything was fine. unfortunately it is the memory of how the play ends that lingers the most.

Love's Comedy at the Orange Tree

The Orange Tree Theatre delights in putting on plays that nobody else does, and that is one of the reasons why I like it, so when we get a play by Ibsen it is the London premier of an early work.

Not that it really mattered what it was, I go to everything at the Orange Tree. I'd quite like a season ticket then I would be sure of my favourite seat. I got the usual front-row position this time only by making some old people sit closer together than they are probably used to.

It was good to see the theatre so busy, even if the average age is a cause of concern for the future.

Love's Comedy is mostly dialogue to a simple stage suits it. The conversations happen indoors and out and the stage is happy to play both roles at the same time.

There is a large cast of characters and while there is little direct action (this is an Ibsen play) there is much coming and going making use of all four of the Orange Tree's exits/entrances. There is even some movement behind the audience.

This was the fist play directed by David Antrobus a Orange Tree regular as an actor. So it's not surprising that he knew how to make the most of the physical attributes of the theatre.

The cast includes a widowed mother, her two daughters, the three men chasing them and a young couple who have been engaged for some time but who cannot yet afford to get married.

Their conversations are about love and relationships and things that are needed to sustain them.

Most of the characters are young and entering in to relationships for the first time so they are full of hope and good expectations.

They also start to explore the consequences of being a couple and this is particularly acute when we learn that one young man expects to take his wife from Norway to the USA where we can get a better job as a pastor.

Most of the discussion is conventional and practicable but one of the young men, Falk, a poet, questions this and wants to rejoice in the hear-and-now of love rather than plan for its future. One of the daughters, Svanhild, is captivated and they plan to run off together.

It is the story of Falk and Svanhild that the play revolves around but while they are the main roles the play needs all of the other points of view to work.

I have seen plays where some of the characters seemed to be completely pointless, this is not one of them.

It is important not to forget the word "comedy" in the play's title as there is a gentle thread of humour throughout, most of which comes from the silliness of some of the characters.

The play is not perfect though, and you would not expect an early work to be so. The structure is fine but some of the main conversations go on for too long and there are so many of them that it makes the play a little overly long.

The only other problem I had with the play, and it was just my problem, is that Falk looked remarkably like somebody I know and that was very distracting.

But these were two minor problems in a rich play delivered expertly by the whole creative team.

Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic

The Old Vic has decided that Sheridan Smith is the big pull for the new Hedda Gabler and they are probably right. It is certainly one of the reasons that I went.

The other reasons were the Isben and Old Vic brands, both of which have stood me pretty well in the past (with some notable exceptions).

The evening got off to good start with a glass of champagne in the Pit Bar under the theatre and then a quick word with some of the cast of Benidorm who were there to see their former colleague (Sheridan was in Series 3).

Then it was time to settle in to my seat in the centre of the front row of the Dress Circle. This is my favourite position in large theatres.

Hedda Gabler covers familiar Ibsen territory, a married woman in some turmoil that include another man.

Hedda is married to a seriously boring but earnest academic (not sure how that happened) and they have returned to Oslo after their long honeymoon (which was more academic research than romance) to start their new life in a rather grand house. He has hopes of a professorship but she lacks any ambition for the future.

Add to the mix a former college friend who went off the rails but who has bounced back with a highly regarded book, a lecherous judge, an aunt who wants to bring Hedda firmly in to the extended family, a stubborn maid who has served the family for many years and another former colleague (a woman) who appears to have left her husband in Trondheim to be with the author having helped him to write his book over many months.

Hedda's life is full of options but none of them look that good.

Her husband wants to wallow in academia, the author wants to rekindle an earlier romance and the judge wants to call on her every day until she relents to his pursuit.

Hedda starts by trying to impose her will on everything from whether the curtains should be open and what to call her new auntie. She is brusque and deliberately insulting as she does this. It's a temper tantrum from a spoilt brat.

The story develops from there. You know it is going to be an unhappy ending but the suspense comes from not knowing which unhappy ending it will be. There are quite a few jokes along the way and the play is surprisingly light for most of the way but Hedda's position is always untenable and a denouement inevitable.

The cast are magnificent especially the husband and the errant wife. In one memorable scene when the possibility of babies is mentioned he goes right over the top moving quickly past choosing names for them to selecting which piano teacher to have.

Sheridan as Hedda I am less sure about and even less sure whether the lack of Hedda's gravitas was down to her acting, the direction she was given or the way the character is written in the play, i.e. perhaps it was meant to be like that.

I had no particular problems with the way Hedda was played but it did seem a little odd for Ibsen to name the play after this character and for the Old Vic to make such a fuss over Sheridan playing it when the role is not actually central to the play. It is as much about the husband and the author as it is about her.

Putting aside my unrealistic unmet expectations, this was an excellent production with a lot of rich characters interacting vibrantly with each other as the complex situation evolves. Everybody played their part well and the evening was definitely a big success if not quite a triumph.

The Lady from the Sea at the Rose

The Rose Theatre and I still do not get on.

I am doing my best to like it, and I even have tickets for two more shows, but nothing I have seen there so far has been special and The Lady from the Sea was decidedly poor.

I have seen a few Ibsen plays over the years and I really loved The Dolls House at the Arcola Theatre last year, so I went to this with some reasonable expectations. Though, to be fair, I was a cheapskate and went during the preview week to get cheaper seats.

The Lady from the Sea tells the tale of a woman who is haunted by a relationship in her past and wonders if she made the right decision.

She married somebody else (his second wife) and moved away from her home town to live with him and his two daughters. Step daughters and Mum are not close.

Then news comes that the old flame is not only alive but working on a steamer that is due to visit the local port. The flame duly arrives to claim his former lover and she needs to decide again which path to take.

So, like other Ibsen plays, it is a tense emotional drama with a limited amount of action. And that's fine as long as it is presented well but I found the Rose's production lacking in some key areas.

The set was simple enough (which I like) though you would never have guessed that it was meant to be Norway.

I also felt that it was too bright for the emotions that it was trying to portray. It reminded me of a P S Kroyer painting, and that's a happy scene in flat Denmark.

Some of the casting I found a little awkward.

The Lady and her husband I could believe in (him possibly more than her) but the rest of the cast seemed to float around the story with little purpose or intent. The old flame did not flicker let alone burn with any passion.

It was also very static, rather like those ballets where only the person dancing is allowed to move. Some of the more intense and dramatic scenes were little more than the two actors standing still and talking to each other. No movement and no passion.I am sure that the play would have been just as effective in audio only.

I left the Rose extremely disappointed with what I had seen and the only consolation was that I had enjoyed it far more than the couple at the bus stop.

A Doll's House at the Arcola Theatre

My Summer holiday in Norway was book-ended by two Norwegian plays.

The first was close to home at the Orange Tree in Richmond but the second, Ibsen's A Doll's House, required a trek to the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. Luckily the London Overground goes directly from Richmond to Dalston so the Arcola is in reasonable reach.

This was my second time at the Arcola, and in Dalston for that matter, and the second trip was made because of the success of the first.

It was the same theatre but a different studio. For Uncle Vanya I was in the main studio but A Doll's House was staged in the smaller Studio 2.

This was very like the familiar Orange Tree except that the seating is only on two side and there are more rows overall. The Arcola has an intimate feel as a result which was enhanced by being in the front row (as usual).

The surprises started immediately as several of the cast were already in position but motionless, waiting for us to be ready. Once we were (and that took a little time as the show was sold out and some squeezing had to be done to get everybody on to the benches) the lights dimmed and the actors stirred.

What followed was enchanting and engaging.

The play is what it is. The story is simple but strong and believable. What matters then is what the cast and crew make of it.

I liked the simple presentation with the almost bare stage acting as the main room of the house and the study to one side but clearly visible.

The scant props were used sparingly. The jumble of decorations in the room seemed to have no meaning but they certainly added to the charm of the evening.

I thought that all the acting was fine. I found all the roles convincing and that is the main thing. I could have thumped the husband for his outdated bigotry but that was not the actor's fault, he was merely playing the role of a bigot in an old play.

The unusual feature of the performance was the addition of three ghost-like women who, in addition to playing occasional roles like maids, hover around the wife (the doll) exaggerating the emotion of the situation on their faces.

A simple effect that works well; the sense of impeding doom is stronger if you can see somebody who looks truly doomed.

Overall the production came across as clever but clever for all the right reasons, not just clever for clever's sake - a mistake that some productions that I have seen recently have skirted close to.

If you have a good story a good production and some fine acting then you've got a good show and a good evening out. And A Doll's House was definitely that. Most satisfying.