New production of Ibsen classic A Doll's House at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield

Director Elin Schofield with Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.Director Elin Schofield with Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.
Director Elin Schofield with Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.
Why do we - and more pertinently, our theatres - keep returning to classic plays? Chris Bush has a theory: “There’s certainly a practical, even cynical answer here around theatres seeing classics and recognisable titles as a safer bet than entirely new work.”

The playwright speaks the often seemingly unspeakable truth - as playwrights are sometimes wont to do. If it feels like certain Shakespeare texts or other classics pop up with increasing regularity of late, it’s not you; it is the state of British theatre. The industry is facing unprecedented challenges and many parts of the sector are responding by staging plays that are on the curriculum and titles that people will recognise and are therefore more likely to buy tickets to see.

There is another, less cynical reason, says Bush: “These texts endure for a reason. From Ancient Greece to 19th Century Norway, a small handful of plays are performed time and time again, not because of a lack of imagination on the part of artistic programmers, but because they capture something powerful and universal that transcends their era and the hundreds of plays that don’t do this successfully are consigned to history.”

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Bush knows something about this, having adapted Ibsen’s A Doll’s House for Sheffield Theatres, opening at the Crucible this week.

Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.
Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.

“In A Doll’s House, for instance, Ibsen is writing about a woman who believes she has the perfect life, but over a few short days will come to question everything she thought she knew and thought she wanted. Each generation of writers brings their own experiences and understanding of gender dynamics to Nora, but the truth of her situation never changes,” says Bush.

The writer is returning to Sheffield following the impressive success of Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which began on the Crucible stage before transferring first to the National Theatre and from there into the West End. Ibsen is a quite different prospect.

First performed in Copenhagen in 1879, A Doll’s House begins in the apartment of the Helmers on Christmas Eve. Nora is her husband’s cherished ‘songbird’ and their marriage is, on the surface, a happy one. Beneath the surface lurks a secret of how Nora saved her husband’s life, a secret that begins to emerge.

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Following its premiere, it soon became considered one of the landmark plays of the nineteenth century. Bush says: “There’s something irresistible and intimidating about taking on any canonical text. I first said yes to this project because I love working with Elin Schofield, our director. I think I studied A Doll’s House at A level, but it wasn’t until I got stuck into my own adaptation that I realised just how brilliant it is. The more I got under its skin, the less I needed to change. Ibsen is a phenomenal observer of domestic drama, particularly in his writing of women. He’s also much funnier than a lot of people give him credit for, and that felt important to me too.”

Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.
Siena Kelly and Tom Glenister in rehearsals for A Doll’s House. Picture: Chris Saunders.

When taking a ‘canonical’ text, how do you make it your own, is always the question for a contemporary playwright. Bush says: “I think it’s less about making it my own, more about making sure an audience today can experience it with some of the same shock and immediacy as they might’ve done back in the late 19th century. I don’t want to treat it as some dusty old classic, preserved in aspic. Even though we’re keeping the original period setting, the conflict and relationships need to feel just as important and understandable now. I’ve made a few small tweaks to some of the character’s backstories to help me make better sense of them, but this isn’t a radical reimagining.”

Bush will probably be always known in Sheffield as the writer behind Standing the Sky’s Edge, although the playwright has written seven plays for the Crucible and ten in total for Sheffield Theatres. This is the first play since Standing at the Sky’s Edge, so does that bring added pressure?

“It probably helps that the two pieces couldn’t be more different (and moreover, everyone in Sheffield, quite reasonably, knows Sky’s Edge as the Richard Hawley show – it doesn’t pile that much more expectation onto me). As much as possible, I just want to make good work. As long as I feel like a show works on its own merits, I don’t tend to compare it too much to what I’ve done in the past.”

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Which is all well and good, but Bush is returning to Sheffield this time as an Olivier award-winning writer who has had a successful run in the West End.

“I think most writers fluctuate wildly between fully buying into their own genius and being racked with self-doubt (or maybe that’s just me). A hit like Sky’s Edge is certainly a confidence boost, but I don’t think it’s changed things too dramatically, and whatever success I achieve, there’s always a sense that you’re only as good as your last show. That said, I wrote my first play when I was thirteen – I have over twenty years of writing experience behind me – and I like to think I probably know what I’m doing by now. That muscle memory certainly helps with the dread of a blank page, and I can more-or-less jump into any stage project and find my feet quite quickly.”

At the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield to October 12. sheffieldtheatres.co.uk

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