On the surface, Nora and Torvald are like any other married couple – affectionate and happy adhering to the time-honored cliché of man being the bread winner and the woman, a home maker. Scratch the surface and you see the underlying dynamics coming to fore. Is a woman merely a subordinate to the husband in a hierarchy imposed by society and what place does equality hold in a marriage?
A Doll’s House, staged as the part of Qadir Ali Baig Foundation’s theatre festival, is based on Henrik Ibsen’s play from 1879 which is often touted as a pioneer in the movement of women’s emancipation. Relevant more than a century after it was originally written, it raises pertinent questions about the choices and conundrums faced by women in modern society.On the face of it, Nora and her husband Torvald, are relatively happy. Torvald has just received a major promotion while Nora seems a superfluous spendthrift who wants ‘masses and masses of money’. Nora however hides a secret behind her impish behaviour which threatens to derail her outwardly picture perfect world. She had borrowed a substantial amount from her husband’s colleague — without Torvald’s knowledge — to help him recover from a major illness. In the process, Nora had forged her father’s signature (as a woman couldn’t raise a loan unless a male was the co-signer) and is desperate to keep the truth from her husband.
Nora now needs to repay the debt to an increasingly belligerent lender who threatens to reveal the truth to her husband unless she helps him save his job.
When the truth does come out, Nora is shocked to realise that her husband never looked upon her as an equal and that she has been living in a ‘doll’s house’ all along, where she was only expected to look pretty and take care of the house without any real role or responsibility. In the final scene, which makes one of the most famous stories of female emancipation of all times, Nora asserts that she is a human being first and only then a woman, unwittingly becoming a champion of women’s rights.
Brought alive on stage by Ira Dubey and Joy Sengupta, this adaptation directed by Pushan Kripalani manages the tough task of bringing the conflict of the traditional roles of man and woman to the fore with some nuanced acting. Ira Dubey flits effortlessly from a happy go lucky homemaker to a woman who doesn’t hesitate to break free on the shackles imposed on her.
Joy Sengupta slips into the role of a typical husband who revels in his roles as a breadwinner without compassion towards his wife with ease and never allows his character to slip into a caricature.
Though the 100-minute play starts off on a slow note, it picks up pace in the second half. Asking riveting questions on the role of women, it leaves you incredulous at how it remains as relevant today as it did more than a century since it was first written!
