A 21st-century take on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

every time I write about Ibsen’s most famous play, I have to look up the punctuation, haunted by making a greengrocerly mistake. Is it A Doll’s House or A Dolls’ House? How many people are actually trapped in the sugar-coated world on which Nora Helmer slammed the door in 1879?

The traditional view is that this is a tale of one woman’s bid for freedom. Ibsen later denied that he was simply writing ideologically (what writer wouldn’t), but he put his starting point plainly in his 1878 notes: “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society.” Social arrangements have progressed since then, but some fundamental power dynamics have not changed: you don’t hear of men throwing themselves off bridges because of abuse at home or of women chucking their boyfriends out of tower-block windows. Still, various arguments around feminism have shifted. Pretty much everyone who isn’t an incel recognises that what used to be called “women’s lib” was never a smash-and-grab raid: that infantilising women diminishes men; equity will free both.

Anya Reiss takes the double entrapment onboard in her forthright and clever new version, which transplants the action to 21st-century London and brings a chill wind from outside to blow on the pampered, fragile couple: Hyemi Shin’s bleakly luxurious design shows a cavernous, pale apartment strewn with Christmas baubles and carrier bags from Liberty and Hamleys. At each point, the plot dances away from Ibsen while gesturing at it. Torvald Helmer, Nora’s banker husband, has a history of drug abuse rather than an unspecified illness.

Nora, instead of guzzling macaroons behind her hubby’s back, is, in a non-violent way, force-fed by him: “I’ll get fat,” she protests as he drops sweets into her mouth as if she were a fledgling. In a moment that has gained an unanticipated extra charge (or was it tweaked?), the bombing of an oil-rich country by Americans is seen on television. The destruction is greeted by Torvald with whoops of joy since it will save him from imminent financial ruin. This is the moment of revelation for Nora.

Reiss, who had her first play performed in 2010 while she was waiting for her A-level results, has always written clamorous dialogue: 15 years ago, Spur of the Moment filled the Royal Court with the jackdaw chatter of teenage girls. Her Doll’s House is both blunt and sharp. Not least in woman-handling the plot. Each crucial decision, each disaster, is seen to be dictated by a need or craving for money; every character is afflicted by this, as is the wider world.

Tightly directed by Joe Hill- Gibbins, the argument is full of conviction; the mechanics of dependency are shrewdly exposed. Yet an emotional register is missing. It is a tense rather than a disturbing evening. Romola Garai is a powerful Nora. That would have been an insurmountable paradox in the 19th-century version. Not any longer: you may question why, since she is clever and seems never to do much with her children, Nora doesn’t get out more, but we all now know that coercive control is not exercised only over the timid. Garai brings her extraordinary physical candour to the stage: vibrating as frustration and confrontation fight it out within her. Tom Mothersdale has just the right overfocus as the ex-addict husband, struggling to separate from his laptop, twisting from endearment to abuse. I wonder only whether the two of them need to do so much arm-acting while sprawled on the floor.

As the unsung heroine of the play – Ibsen’s troubled female leads are rarely the most independent women on stage – Thalissa Teixeira brings a tremor of tenderness to the drama as Kristine Linde, impoverished, disregarded and finally fulfilled in love. She is deep-voiced, restrained, a perfect counterpart to Garai’s muscular frankness. I am especially glad to see her radiance again, having first admired her rapid transformations a decade ago in The Night Watch, Yerma and The Unknown Island.

How much can this really be A Doll’s House if Nora does not slam its door? Reiss’s ending, logical after the twists of her plot, is ambiguous – with some comedy as the couple tangle with each other about who is going to go. Ibsen’s ending brings a gust of relief but also anguish: the children are to be left. Reiss gives the couple a softer landing. Ibsen described a condition, a way of being. Reiss presents a dilemma.

A Doll’s House is at Almeida, London, until 23 May

Photograph by Marc Brenner