Play about women

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32971, 18 July 1972, Page 10

Play about women

Henrik Ibsen, the nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright, was a 1972 man in his advocacy of women’s rights, says Yvette Bromley, who is producing Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” for the Court Theatre. The production will open in Begg’s Theatre on August i 2 for a season of three | weeks. One of the most popular; classics, “A Doll’s House” is; revived at regular intervalsi around the world, and at one; of the most recent produc-1 tions, in New York, Claire j Bloom took the lead as Noraj

and received a standing j ovation. *“A Doll’s House’ is a cri | de coeur for the wretched woman, Nora, who is dominated and humiliated by her; husband, Helmer,” Mrs • Bromley says. "She is ‘protected’ from all responsibility and kept ignorant of even the most rudimentary knowledge of worldly affairs by her husband, who feels that practical knowledge is unladylike. “When her husband is ill and she needs money to take him for a holiday, she signs her dying father’s name toI a note. Her father dies before he can put his legal signature to the document. Krogstad, who lent her the monev (and became one of her husband’s employees), realising the signature was a forgery and desperate to keep' his job which is being; threatened by a woman, i Kristina Linde, tries to blackmail Nora into helping him! keep his job. "Nora thinks Helmer will! understand her deception, j but instead he chastises her, as if she were, indeed, only; a doll with no mind. Nora’s; reaction to this is only whati any red-blooded woman’s would be, and is the basis of Women’s Lib—that women ■ should be considered as equals, mentally, to men and! not treated, as Nora says, 'like a doll wife, living by performing tricks.’ "The play will raise the blood-pressure of all women,; and will surely give the men; a few uneasy moments as they feel a shock of recogni-| tion in their own attitudes i towards their wives,” Mrs! Bromley says. “One of the significant as-1 pects is the title of the play; —the apostrophe must be in; the right place. This is not a play about a dolls-house. it is about a doll imprisoned; within four walls: a puppet; performing mindlessly and | without any self-motivation, I manipulated by first a father! and then a husband.” Mrs; Bromley says. “She is kent I from all reality, allowed only; a say in the running of the!

house and the decorating ofi the Christmas-tree — enough j to make a woman’s blood j boil. “Along with ‘Henry V,’ ‘Mother Courage,’ and many!

of Chekhov’s plays, ‘A Doll’s House’ is a propaganda play, but it does not simply supply a diagnosis. Like a good surgeon, it also recommends a cure.”