A Doll’s House Part 2 - Donmar Warehouse

My friends and I found this to be one of the best acted, directed, written and staged productions we have seen for a long time. I think it helped being centre of the second row of the Stalls facing the stage rather than upstairs or the other side of the stage. Completely surprised at how much I loved it after reading the reviews

A further concern, prompted by my visit to the Donmar, that has been brewing is that more and more theatres seem to be chasing the same plays, the same writers so they are losing their identity. The new Lucy Kirkwood or Suzanne Lori-Parks or Lynn Nottage or Mike Bartlett could pop up anywhere: Donmar, Almeida, Royal Court, National, Hampstead, Young Vic, Old Vic, Lyric Hammersmith. Theatres don't seem to have the long-term relationships with writers that they used to. This may not matter, of course, but it is certainly different to what I remember from my early theatre-going days in the late 80s-early 90s. And I think a lot more theatres are looking for new writing (it's not something the Donmar or Almeida were known for in the 90s for example).

I have just booked to see this on Thursday - via a heavily discounted price on TodayTix (the midpriced tickets - £41 - are down to £25 on there - everything else is actually going for more than the Donmar's own price).

What on *earth* is going on that I have managed to book a ticket for both this, and the forthcoming The Trials, without much bother? I'd always been led to believe that getting a ticket to anything at The Donmar was like managing to find a golden needle in a haystack, so robust was the interest in absolutely anything they staged. Is this a post-pandemic reluctance to return on the part of the audience? Or something else?

Well, they're doing more new writing now, in this case a writer whom most of us, even those of us who see quite a lot of theatre, will not have heard of.  And as Adolphus says, in the 90s in particular under Mendes, but also under Grandage in the 2000s it was known for very starry revivals for which you needed to be a member to get a seat for - I saw Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow there for example as well as a lot of brilliant theatre actors.  The Almeida was the same in the 90s (it's where Kevin Spacey first appeared in the UK, Juliette Binoche acted there etc) though with a different aesthetic.  I rather miss those days.

I enjoyed the performances in this but didn't love this play. I like plays that debate social issues, but this one didn't go deep enough into the debate or challenge its characters enough IMO. Nora felt oddly static as a character - most of her development had happened before this point, so there was a lot of dialogue filling in all the gaps about what's happened since she left, how she's changed, but for me that threw a light onto how little she moves on in the course of the play.

I don't think the title did this any favours. I think it probably works as a standalone drama, but the title imples that you need to have some knowledge of 'part 1'. That's hardly going to pull in occasional theatregoers or people who haven't heard of Ibsen (most people, in my experience).

Previous comments have mentioned how funny the US production was. I don't mind modern/anachronistic dialogue, but I sat there puzzling about the meaning of these English-accented actors speaking American slang - it often felt distancing rather than funny, and maybe undermined the play, which presumably was written for American actors. Would it have been better served by using American accents?