Nora, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, review Following this adaptation of A Doll's House, Ibsen's landmark feminist play in which a wife walks out on her husband and children in order to discover who she really is, the Belgrade will stage Strindberg's bracing, at times downright barking response to the drama, The Father. No mindless good cheer in Coventry and full marks to artistic director Hamish Glen for sticking to his artistic principles. Unfortunately, I find it harder to be wildly enthusiastic about Patricia Benecke's staging of Nora. This is a stripped-down version of A Doll's House by the great film and theatre director Ingmar Bergman. It was first staged in 1984, reduces the running time by about a third and removes several supporting characters, among them, and fatally in my view, the children on whom Nora walks out. We hear about them but never see her with them, and if we haven't watched Nora affectionately playing with her offspring in an early scene, her decision to abandon them, as well as her complacent husband, seems far less painful. But Ibsen's play, with its talk of promissory notes, coy allusions to inherited syphilis and a plot that turns on costly rest cures in the sunny South, still feels distinctively 19th century. And in a 21st-century setting, Nora's espousal of radical feminism seems far less shocking. This is, I think, the only Ibsen play I have seen that contains stage nudity, when David Michaels's smug, horribly patronising Torvald celebrates his release from ruin by making love to Nora, whom he has only minutes before roundly abused and banned from taking any further role in bringing up their children. It's a sinister, shiver-inducing scene, not least because Nora meekly complies before discovering her courage. Penny Layden brings the right mixture of anxiety and manipulative flirtatiousness to Nora but could usefully discover greater depths of pain and desperation in the character. Indeed, all the performances need to be beefed up a little, most notably those from Stuart Laing as Nora's blackmailing moneylender and Peter Lindford, who could usefully find darker depths in the terminally ill Dr Rank. Nevertheless the piece certainly grips throughout its taut, 95-minute running time, while Ibsen's superbly skilful plotting snaps shut like a vicious trap. Until Feb 18.