Knocking at the door is Nora Helmer (Noma Dumezweni) who slammed it and left her husband and three children, 15 years before.  Ibsen’s Nora was based on the life of a real woman Laura Kieler who had borrowed money to take her husband Viktor who had tuberculosis abroad where he recovered.  Kirsten Shepherd-Barr has written a full history of Laura Kieler in the Donmar programme and it is excellent background. 

Lucas Hnath, a young American playwright has written this sequel to Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House exploring the situation that women of the 1870s would have found themselves in. Nora has made a success of her life by writing novels under an assumed, pen name.  Her writings encouraged women not to stay in unhappy marriages and this has had consequences for her. 

A judge, whose wife left him after reading the book, has researched who the writer really is and knows her real name and has written threatening to expose her.  Besides the original fraud of signing her dead father’s signature, Nora has signed believing she were a divorced woman.  Torvald had said he would divorce her.  The law meant that anything married women did had to be signed by their husband and to sign for herself was illegal and she would be open to being prosecuted for fraud.