A Doll’s House

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin Previews until Apr 9 €15 Opens Apr 10-28 8pm €18-€30 01-6770014

In Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, an infantilised Nora, kept in cosy domesticity, realises her own agency, risks total destruction and finally abandons her husband and children in pursuit of a true self.

There’s no guarantee that any of this will happen quite like that in Pan Pan’s staging of this once- incendiary play. That’s not to suggest that director Gavin Quinn and designer Aedín Cosgrove, one of the most brilliant partnerships in contemporary theatre, ever disregard the classics. Rather, they tend to scrutinise them the way long-term prisoners familiarise themselves with the law: something to learn, crack and exploit.

Audiences in Ireland and far beyond know the playful intelligence Pan Pan has brought to Shakespeare (a version of King Lear follows later this year), the twists it added to Sophocles, the legal loop holes it found in Beckett. For all its status as a foundation stone of naturalism, Ibsen’s play is flawed enough to allow room to manoeuvre – it’s “the Rock Around the Clock of the theatre” as Fintan O’Toole put it – and has seen many revisions, from the Schaubühne’s alternative ending to the midget cast of Mabou Mines.

Pan Pan knows this, of course: this Doll’s House ought to feature their own renovations.

Can't see that? Catch this:

Durang Durang

Project Arts Centre, Dublin