Casting Announced For A DOLL'S HOUSE At The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre

The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre today announces the cast for A Doll's House, the first production directed by Rachel O'Riordan in her inaugural season as Artistic Director. Written by Henrik Ibsen and adapted by the award winning Tanika Gupta, this new take on an old classic explores gender politics, ownership and race in 1879, Calcutta.

As previously announced, the role of Niru - Nora in the original - is played by Anjana Vasan, who is currently performing in Rutherford and Son at the National Theatre, and played Rosemary/Rosa Gonzales in Summer and Smoke at the Almeida and in the West End last year. Niru's husband, Tom Helmer - originally Torvald - is played by Elliot Cowan, known for his Ian Charleson Award nominated portrayal of Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband at the Vaudeville Theatre.

Anjana and Elliot will be joined by Arinder Sadhra (Icarus at the Unicorn Theatre, War Horse at the National Theatre, Redefining Juliet at the Barbican) as Uma, Colin Tierney (The Girl on the Train at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, The March on Russia at the Orange Tree Theatre, All Our Children at Jermyn Street Theatre) as Dr Rank, Tripti Tripuraneni (Much Ado About Nothing at Watford Palace Theatre, UK Tour of Jungle Book, Macbeth at the National Theatre) as Mrs Lahiri, and Assad Zaman as Kaushik Das (White Teeth at the Tricycle Theatre, Coriolanus and Salome at the RSC, and Arms And The Man at the Watford Palace).

Niru is a young Bengali woman in a mixed-race marriage with Tom, an English colonial bureaucrat. He loves Niru, exoticising her as a frivolous plaything to be admired and kept. But Niru has a long-kept secret, and just as she thinks she is almost free of it, it threatens to bring her life crashing down around her.

Tanika's adaptation gives new urgency to the forces that drive a heroine to choose between society's expectations and her own identity.

A Doll's House is supported by Cockayne - Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation

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