On the 11th of March, Farringtons School held a gifted and talented trip to ‘The Young Vic Theatre’ in London. Selected Year 10 and 11 students headed to London to watch ‘Nora: A doll’s house’, a play that was initially written by the Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, then adapted by Stef Smith.
The play is about a woman called Nora that seems completely happy, she has a husband, three children and takes pleasure in the company of her friends and neighbours. She is so busy with her lifestyle that she doesn’t realise how all this time she had been playing the role of a doll in her own house. As the play evolved she finds out that she has an unbelievably massive debt that needs to be paid due to a loan she took in the need to help her husband when he got ill. She gets blackmailed by her husbands employee who is not willing to give up his job for this debt that she cannot pay back. Her life takes a major downward spiral and her husband finds out about the debt. He is so unhappy with what happened that it drives Nora crazy. She realises how she had been treated by her husband all these years and she wants to leave straight away. She leaves home and starts to live her life as she wants to and experience her newly found independence.
In this adaptation of the play Nora is played by three different actresses in three different time periods. One in 1918, one in 1968 and another in 2018. They all act differently according to their time periods and we can see the clear differences portrayed clearly by the language used and movement shown.
The moral of the story is that no matter what era women live in, some women still feel like they’re not given the equality that they need and that they are still treated badly. This is essentially what this play is trying to portray and trying to change and it’s a message that needed to be understood by society then and should be understood by society now. I’m sure in the end we all had a great time watching this inspiring and moving play that had an impact on all of us, for sure.
