Carrie Cracknell: 'It's like bringing people into your dream' Jul 20th 2013, 23:04
The gifted young director on Ibsen, the entrapment of women and why she loves to be in control
At 32, Carrie Cracknell is one of our most gifted young directors and on the receiving end of a pile of critical bouquets (most recently for a dauntless Wozzeck at ENO). And now her production of A Doll's House is about to transfer to the West End. She looks as though she should be starring in it. She's dressed with a stylishness that would not disgrace Ibsen's Nora (in a wrap of the sort that can only be worn by those born elegant) but she has nothing of the tormented neurotic about her. And her sunny intelligence seems exactly right for the summer day on which we meet.
Over brunch in a Tufnell Park gastropub, she explains that the play is not set in a house at all – though A Doll's Flat, we agree, would not have charmed as a title. She and designer Ian MacNeil went to Norway, inspected Ibsen's apartment and determined to set the play in an attractive yet claustrophobic way. The revolving stage would "follow Nora as if she were trapped on a turntable or on a hamster's wheel".
Cracknell sees the play as an exploration of the ways in which "people sometimes live false lives with partners. It's about human beings trying to find the truest versions of themselves." Women's lifestyles have changed irrevocably but tensions still resonate, she says. Yet today's Noras are differently trapped: "We are sold the idea that women are free, our experience equal to men's. The new entrapment is about women trying to fulfil an infinite number of roles." She finds it "chilling" that women are "increasingly sexualised in our culture".
At Nottingham (where she read history), Cracknell got into directing after a "disastrous" attempt at acting – "I didn't know my lines… it was destabilising." Directing appeals because it's "being on the outside looking in and in control of the whole world". What is unnerving as a performer is "being inside and unable to see". It was at Edinburgh that directing really possessed her. She relishes "its intensity of communication and having a strange conceit about a piece – it's like bringing people into your dream world".
Many dreams are brewing. Cracknell is an associate director to Vicky Featherstone at the Royal Court. More opera is in the pipeline – and a film. And she's working with Nicholas Payne on an all-female show at the National's Shed exploring the "uncertainties, excitements, tensions of gender politics". Cracknell has two young children but sees herself as too "privileged" to moan about work-life balance (her partner runs an internet advertising company). As she talks, I keep admiring her crystal ball pendant brilliantly catching the light and feel sure her future is visible in it.
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