SERIOUS actresses dream of playing the role of Nora in the same way that serious actors dream of playing Hamlet. Few female roles are, in fact, as rich and full-bodied as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's classic play A Doll's House - the wife and mother who leaves her husband and children because she feels her life is a sham.
When A Doll's House was first staged in Copenhagen in 1879, it was hugely controversial because it showed a woman abandoning her family. In one German production, the actress playing Nora...