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" There is a moment in the first half of the excellent revival of A Doll&#146;s House at the Young Vic when a baby is carried out on stage - a real life, wide-eyed, pink-and-puffy-cheeked baby, not the usual plastic doll in swaddling. It was almost shocking. I don&#146;t think I&#146;ve ever seen a living, breathing, gurgling infant on stage before and if the reaction from the stalls was anything to go by &#150; a collective gasp followed by coos of adoration &#150; not many of my fellow audience members had seen such a thing either. The babe in question, dressed in a fetching white cotton gown, looked quite the vision, adorable and dazed, as you might expect any child brought on stage half way through the first act of an Ibsen play to look. The infant plays the youngest of three children to Nora (the fantastic Hattie Morahan), the Norwegian housewife who finds herself infantilized by her bank manager husband Torvald and decides it just won&#146;t do. I was interested to learn that rather like Billy Elliot the Musical there isn&#146;t just one child but three, who alternate for different performances. What&#146;s more, each performance requires the presence backstage of an understudy baby, who goes onstage should the original baby, for whatever reason, not be up to performing that night. One can only imagine the tantrums backstage. Luvvies, eh!? An insider notes: &#145;If they are crying before they go on stage, then the understudy baby for that performance will go on. If they cry on stage then Hattie will try and coax them out of it. It&amp;#039;s all real.&#148; Of course there is more to this production than the brief appearance of its youngest cast member, not least the kinetic stage design by Ian MacNeil, who puts the apartment on a revolve. The stage turns between scenes, and often in the middle of them, spinning on an axis in much the same way that Nora&#146;s life spins increasingly out of control. This is the last week for the play (it ends on April 20). I beg you to go.\u00A0 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/culture/going-out/news/a21185/a-dolls-house-is-splendid-and-shocking/>