August 31, 2023

TS graduate Anjana Vasan is on the cover of a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House published by Bloomsbury Publishing, UK (2023).

The book cover is taken from the publicity poster for the 2019 production of the adaptation. Anjana played the lead role of this adaptation of Ibsen’s play in 2019 which ran at the Lyric Hammersmith, London. Recontextualised to 1879 Calcutta, Anjana plays Niru, a young Indian woman married to a British colonial officer.

Timeout London had this to say about her performance:

“An awful lot rests on the shoulders of Vasan, as Niru. WIde-eyed on the outside, steely on the inside, she’s magnetic as a woman playing a role to make her way in the world – and playing it with such conviction even she struggles to see the truth about her marriage, until the very end.

Vasan has a nuance and depth of feeling that does a lot of heavy lifting in a show that sometimes feels caught between Ibsen and Gupta. Here, the fiery postcolonial stuff is more compelling than the feminist stuff, and the two don’t always overlap brilliantly: Niru and Tom’s marriage, while clearly not perfect, nonetheless feels a bit too chipper until the very end.

Still, Vasan is fundamentally up to the task of holding the threads together and there’s no denying the boldness of the endeavour – it’s a big, galvanising start to the O’Riordan reign.”

https://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/a-dolls-house-review

For her turn as Niru, Anjana was nominated for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress in 2019.