Living doll

One of the problems in updating Ibsen's 1879 play is that the financial and moral implications of Nora's arrangement with the banker Krogstad lack the tragic potency today that they would have had 100 years ago.

It is the only significant stumbling block in Thomas Ostermeier's bold, provocative production (in German, with English surtitles), which puts a savage 21st-century gloss on the marriage of Nora and Torvald Helmer.

Against Jan Pappelbaum's magnificent, revolving, hi-tech set - a spanking modern interior straight out of Wallpaper magazine - Anne Tismer's Nora and Jˆrg Hartmann's Torvald indulge in warped games of sexual power that, in Nora's case, border on psychosis.

Ostermeier's dramatic design is more hyper-real than real, but his production also has winning streaks of absurdism: the giant fish tank in the Helmers' living room is the site for many a deadpan comic moment; Nora is given to spontaneous dance routines whenever techno comes on the speakers.

A chaotic hysteria runs like a faultline through the Helmers' marriage that taps straight into a very 21st-century sense of neurosis.

If the unorthodox ending suggests Ostermeier has more interest in entertaining his audience than he does in moving them, it doesn't undermine the contemporary resonance of his production.
Until Sun, Barbican, Silk Street EC2, tonight and tomorrow 7.45pm, Sun 3pm, £7 to £30. Tel: 0845 120 7550. www.barbican.org.uk Tube: Barbican/Moorgate

A Doll's House - Nora