Little boys don’t play with dolls, but little men
certainly do in the world of director Lee Breuer’s
“Mabou Mines Dollhouse.”
In the Mabou Mines acting troupe’s take on Henrik
Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House,” women fill
the role of dolls who have fallen into the vicious cycle of being
domineered by the men in their lives.
But what makes this version different is that the women are
nearly 6 feet tall, while the men average in at 4 feet.
“Mabou Mines Dollhouse” will make its West Coast
premiere tomorrow night at the Freud Playhouse as part of UCLA
Live’s International Theatre Festival.
Mark Povinelli, who plays Torvald Helmer in the production, said
Mabou Mines’s version of the play aims to shock audiences
already familiar with Ibsen’s groundbreaking work.
“I’ve told people that this is not your
grandma’s “˜Dollhouse,'” he said.
And just as the take on the material is refreshing for the
audience, the L.A. crowd is refreshing for the world-traveled Mabou
Mines acting troupe.
“There’s a taste for this kind of a production. It
would be a disservice to L.A. not to have it here,” Povinelli
said.
The original “A Doll’s House,” written by
Ibsen in the Victorian era, was radical in its day, a feminist play
that criticized the sexual politics of Victorian marriage. To see
Nora, Torvald’s wife, slam the door on her oppressive
marriage and leave her kids to discover herself seemed
ludicrous.
But today, given the United States’ divorce rate of one in
every two marriages, Nora’s behavior is no more shocking than
having turkey on Thanksgiving.
So how do the actors maintain the relevancy of the play and
prevent Ibsen from feeling outdated?
“It is a very non-traditional interpretation of
“˜Dollhouse.’ It’s our true intention to bring out
Ibsen’s work, but the way we do it is by radically shocking
the senses,” Povinelli said.
“When you think of seeing Ibsen, you want to disassociate
from it somehow, and watch it as a museum piece. We try … to
throw you violently into the piece. … You will actually be
surprised.”
What is non-traditional is not only the size difference between
the two genders, but the suffocating effect of gender roles the
dollhouse unwittingly bestows upon those who live in it. The
characters live in a life-size dollhouse that accommodates, not
surprisingly, the men only.
“Nora physicalizes her part like an animatronic doll
would,” Povinelli said. “Nora literally has lines that
say, “˜My father treated me like a doll, you treat me like a
doll, I treat my children like dolls.’ The reality of her
life is constrained to that of a doll. That’s a great angle
into the heart of the play.”
“A Doll’s House” debuted 127 years ago at The
Royal Copenhagen Theater. By the time it hit Japan in the early
20th century, Nora’s gender-bending role had earned her, and
consequently the “immoral” women who acted like her,
the derogation of committing a “Norism.”
In fact, it is Nora who is the saving grace in the patriarchal
society of “Dollhouse.” She breaks the facade of male
power to show the men for what they really are: instruments of
society who act out the roles that have been instilled into them
their whole lives. They are not bad people, necessarily; it is
society that is bad.
“I think women who see this will be able to see how women
are repressed in society,” said Ricardo Gil, who portrays Dr.
Rank in the play.
Breuer, known for his radical take on classic productions, puts
his own spin on “A Doll’s House,” transplanting
its feminist beginnings into a microcosm of the harmful imbalance
of power in a relationship.
“I think the underlying message is that both Nora and
Torvald suffer. … They’re both set under society’s
norms, so we feel not only for Nora but also for Torvald,”
Gil said. “He is as much a victim as Nora. She’s
leaving without children, leaving into a world almost completely
naked.”
At the surface level, “Dollhouse” may appear to be
just another modernized take on Ibsen’s “A Doll’s
House.” But with patronizing jargon spilling out of the
mouths of 4-foot-tall men and the absurdity of grown women trying
to cram themselves into the world of the men, this production cuts
deep into race, gender and physical conception issues.
“I want the audience to leave and feel as if they
don’t know what to say, that they’ve almost been
assaulted about their preconceived notions about women and
short-statured men,” Povinelli said.
“They have to go home and sort their feelings out, and
figure out how they fit into it ““ that we are all Torvalds
and Nora.”