Mabou Mines DollHouse

Sometimes it’s hard to tell greatness from gimmick. (Especially in the tawdry world of the theater, where it’s all a shell game anyway.) Director Lee Breuer has a particularly cheerful irreverence for the issue, and his willingness to paste a broad concept on the side of a warhorse has led to splendor (Gospel at Colonus) as often as not. His 2003 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s protofeminist classic A Doll’s House also led with an attention-grabbing device: Nora (a statuesque Maude Mitchell) stalks through a world of very small men—the tallest male actor tops out at 53 inches. With her beloved husband, Torvald (Mark Povinelli), only just reaching the top of her thigh, Nora must literally crawl to accommodate his notions of wifely duty.

This visual correlative for Ibsen’s 1879 diagnosis of the modern marriage packs an unusually contemporary punch. Without “updating,” Breuer emphasizes how couples can cosset and diminish each other, how baby talk corrupts even the strong. Sadly, in exploding one set of sexual clichs, Breuer lights the fuse on a host of height-based stereotypes. The show works (even after a wearying six years on the road): DollHouse still stuns with its cleverly melodramatic affectations, Narelle Sissons’s crimson Victoriana set and a mind-blowing operatic conclusion. But Povinelli and the other little people in the cast are symbols first, people second. Breuer undercuts erotic moments with stale stagehand humor and makes easy equations (small = childlike), and Povinelli responds by forcing his performance. Mitchell’s work, though, remains a miracle—it is her staggering prowess as an actor that towers over us.—Helen Shaw

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