ABSTRACT
In spite of the fi ne acting of Janet Achurch as Nora, the fi rst production of A Doll’s House in Australia in 1889 met with a very negative reception by both the working classes, who were not used to such serious drama, and the critics, who did not understand it. It took a boxing kangaroo and the efforts of one woman to reveal how restrictive Australian society was. In a production at the Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, in 1989, the Helmer’s marriage is symbolically depicted as fl oating on thin ice in the staging and the acting, and the audience is more sympathetic. A visiting production of Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse in 2006, with a 3-feet high Thorvald and a doll house scaled down to depict a world in which the women never fi t, also adopted a shift away from psychological realism in staging techniques to make Ibsen relevant for contemporary audiences.
