Nora by Stef Smith at Tramway, Glasgow.

Ibsen's story of Nora slamming the door on her role as a mother is one of the plays which first made me passionate about theatre and feminism. Stef Smith has embodied this passion perfectly in her radical reworking of A Doll's House. Staged in three different decades, with three very different women, Nora is a reminder that 150 years on, we still need to continue to fight against the institutional degradation of women. 

During my Master's in theatre I have developed an interest in why we need to renew canonical plays in order to make them functional within a feminist discourse. Nora in A Doll's House was written by Ibsen as a woman in desperate need of autonomy; a woman trapped by motherhood and expectations of femininity, so much so that the play was banned just for its portrayal of her liberation. We can now stage the original script of A Doll's House without fear of persecution, but is this the same worldwide? And, even more so, are the sentiments of the play appreciated in even the most developed of countries? Stef Smith clearly understands how little has changed since society stopped Nora from walking out of her family home, and has written a play to demonstrate that this stagnant attitude to female roles is no longer acceptable.

It was wonderful to see how full the theatre was. One of the problem's with these classic texts is that they're often not attractive to modern audiences, and it was reassuring to know how popular the show had been. The script was astounding, writing three interpretations of Nora in three different eras of feminism; the suffragettes of 1918, the new women of 1968, and the fourth wave of 2018. Each one, however, doesn't quite fit into the progress happening around them, and the individual performances were both heart-breaking and empowering.

The staging worked well too, with the exposed set honing in on the emotions of the individuals. The three Nora's never left the stage, and as each one was interacting with their own time period, the others were positioned side of stage looking anxious and fearful. For the most part they worked independently, until a haunting moment close to the end when their paths crossed and the seemingly selfish decision to walk out on their families in fact becomes a moment of solidarity. This is not for themselves, this is a symbol for every woman out there like them, struggling to find their way in a male dominated world. I couldn't help but well up at the final lines which were a call to arms for equality, declaring that change is on its way whether we like it or not.

Hats off to Stef Smith for making me so over joyed with feminism that I cried, and for making this important text slot perfectly into the landscape of twentieth-century theatre. I'd go see it again, and again, if I could.