Mabou Mines DollHouse: Intelligently Absurd

By Gordon Cox

November 24, 2003

It sounds gimmicky, and maybe a little exploitative. "Mabou Mines DollHouse," an adaptation of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" from the experimental theater troupe Mabou Mines, has a cast that includes three women who are very tall and three men who are very, very short - as in, not much over 4 feet.

But Lee Breuer, the director and adapter of "DollHouse" (and one of the artistic directors of Mabou Mines), uses the physical disparities in his ensemble to create an intelligently absurdist vision of Ibsen's proto-feminist drama. This towering Nora lives in a fun-house world where she must cram herself into undersized furniture, and crawl on all fours to ingratiate herself to her husband, Torvald.

It's an ingenious bit of visual tension that underscores the effort involved, not only from the tiny men but also from the imposing women, in maintaining a social order that we know will not hold. This is the play, after all, in which our heroine, Nora, famously - and in 1879, when the play was written, shockingly - escapes subjugation by walking away from her family.

Even if "A Doll's House" is a serious groundbreaker of modern drama, that doesn't mean that Breuer and company can't have some playful, nose- thumbing fun with it. The production regularly hits a pitch of comically overheated melodrama that highlights what is, if you look at it from the right angle, a soapy plot of deception, extortion and masked passion (abetted by a fluent score, played live by keyboardist Ning Yu). That Ibsen was Norwegian inspires all the actors to speak in a Scandinavian accent that's not only very funny (the characters spend a lot of time discussing a job and pronouncing it "yob"), but it also gives the characters' names an effectively authentic sound.

At the center of "DollHouse" is a smart, exhausting performance by Maude Mitchell. With a chipmunk voice and a fluttery walk, Mitchell makes it clear just how much demeaning work is involved for Nora to diminish herself next to her husband. She caricatures without condescending, and finds palpable relief in Nora's climactic decision.

Mark Povinelli gives Torvald a consistent air of swollen self-importance, whether as an officious disciplinarian or an indulgent guardian. As Nora's friend Kristine, Honora Fergusson has a grounded deadpan that contrasts well with Nora's desperate contortions. Kristopher Medina cuts a sinister figure as the unscrupulous Krogstadt, and Ricardo Gil conjures real sympathy for lovelorn Dr. Rank.

Not all of Breuer's choices are successful. The dramatic tarantella scene (staged, according to the program, with the help of Martha Clarke) descends into a chaos that inexplicably alludes to silent films, and in a couple of scenes, the revelation of the sex seething underneath the drawing-room decorum feels more standardly glib than enlightening.

Still, for all its downtown self-consciousness, the production has an impressive and affecting grasp of the emotional arc of the play. Its concluding coup de theatre is one of those awesome homemade spectacles, complete with an inventive use of puppets, at which Mabou Mines excels. The troupe takes the play's signature finale and re-imagines it, as they have the entire play, in a way that's surprising, insightful, and unexpectedly moving.