Last night I had the good fortune to witness a piece of theatre history.

Since its workshop in 2002 at the New York Theatre Workshop, Mabou Mines Dollhouse has created quite a splash in the theatre community; and with good reason.  Mabou Mines has taken a mainstay of classic (though dated) theatre and through an incredible sense of social propriety (or lack thereof), humor, and metatheatricality, created an entirely new experience.  This isn’t an easy thing to do with something as well-worn as Ibsen (and certainly not with something as well-worn as Ibsen’s most famous play), but I think Mabou Mines has definitively proven that they’re not afraid of tradition, nor to take a risk on a project which could flop or soar.

Nine years of touring all over the world and five international theatre awards

Cuter Majestic Theatre.... GORGEOUS!

later, the production has landed in Boston at ArtsEmerson for its final run before it is put to rest.

Honestly I’m not entirely certain where to begin talking about this.  If you’ve been following the press at all, you’ll know that the biggest splash it’s made has been in the casting of Amazonian women against dwarfish men (no, really, they’re dwarves) and the choice to set the play entirely within what is literally Nora’s dollhouse; a Christmas present for her children.  The furniture and props are all sized for the show’s male actors and the women spend a great deal of the evening on their hands and knees or otherwise stooping to accommodate this.

What the big press points don’t tell you is the next step deeper: all of the actors speak in Swedish-chef-like Norwegian accents which vary in thickness from the play’s beginning to its end.  The play’s first scene is barely decipherable as English (and I’m pretty sure that Helene’s lines are complete Swedish chefed).  Maude Mitchell as Nora Helmer gives the performance of a lifetime, but I’ll get to her in a moment.  For now, let’s just say that her voice would be more at home within a Disney Princess Barbie than a real woman.

Nora and Torvald

But this is just the beginning of the play’s concession to the ridiculous.  Lee Breuer brings the melodrama back to Ibsen (as, I think, one really must to have Ibsen play before a modern audience).  As soon as you are comfortable with one bit (i.e. the accents), Breuer hits you with something else.  I don’t want to give too much away, but suffice to say that by the final curtain it’s as though the designers have thrown up their hands and said “Aw hell, just have everything!”.

Breuer knows how to train an audience.  The adjustment time allotted for each individual conceit shrinks throughout the progress of the play.  What this mean is that the first act (really a compression of Act I and Act II in Ibsen’s source text) drags on for its second half, then hits you upside the head with a sledgehammer about two thirds in, and leaves you with a version of the infamous tarantella scene that I’m not sure we’ll ever see matched in theatre again (be warned: they use strobe lights).  The second act comes on fast and hard and just doesn’t stop until an operatic ending which (like I said) pulls out any stops that may or may not have been left (I’m still deciding which).

Don’t worry, they’ve kept the requisite door slam.  You can’t have A Doll’s House without the door slam.

Last night there was an added complication in that Kristopher Medina, the actor who usually plays Krogstad, played Torvald Helmer.  Medina is a towering 4’6” (as opposed to Mark Povinelli who usually plays Torvald and is 3’9”).  This made Torvald the tallest man on the stage.  In a show which obviously makes continual nods at height and size as symbols of power, I wonder how differently it would have read if Krogstad had been the more physically imposing of the two men.  As it was, it was nearly ridiculous to think of Nic Novicki (Krogstad’s understudy who went on for him last night and who stands at a statuesque 3’10”) doing physical harm to Torvald.  Why should Nora fear for her husband’s safety as she does?  Was it simply a matter of her continuing to be a silly little girl?  In any case, I think the original casting would have changed the story… I’m simply wondering to what degree.

Let’s talk about Maude Mitchell for a moment.  If she had just showed up, done this performance, then disappeared into the ether, I would be insanely jealous of her talent.  More than that, Mitchell is actually the co-adaptor with Breuer, has spoken at several conferences and festivals (both academic and otherwise) around the world, and is currently working on a book entitled “Playing Nora: ‘The Door Slam Heard Round the World,’” which contains thirty interviews with actresses who have performed the role of Nora.  Not only is she immensely talented, but clearly also brilliantly smart.  It’s just not fair!

In Breuer’s world of toys and games, Mitchell becomes a (literally) toy of a woman.  She speaks in aforementioned hushed Disney Barbie Swedish Chef language.  She croons more like a bird than a person.  She crawls on her hands and knees the entire production and somehow makes that graceful.  When she does stand to her full stature, she spins and whirls like a top.  She makes sounds and plucks at the garments of the men like an endearing squirrel.  She is, in every sense of the word, a doll.

There’s only one problem with this.  If Nora is a doll, then how can she be sympathetic?  Both myself and my companion last night agreed that we left the theatre perhaps not enamored of Torvald, but at least with some understanding of his attitudes and actions.  They were rational.  They made sense.  Nora, as a doll, couldn’t possibly exist in a world outside of her doll’s house.  Someone had to take care of her.

Moreover, I found myself unconvinced that Mitchell’s Nora would be able to deal with the Krogstad business which the script demands of her.  I found myself dubious at best at her ability to raise children, but the presence of a handy dandy nursemaid (who seemed quite capable… especially at stealing scenes) allayed that particular inconsistency.

In addition, I wondered what it was (precisely) that I was seeing.  Since the entire play takes place inside the doll’s house, what was the world like outside the doll’s house?  Were the characters as they were only within the doll’s house and did they mystically become something different outside?  Was this really a world where all the men are short of stature and women are nothing more than pretty little animals attending to them?  Did the doll’s house somehow show us the essence of a human being Richard III style and clear our minds of all accessory which may prevent us from seeing the truth of what was going on?

I left the theatre unsure what to say and on the whole I’m mostly still processing what it was I saw last night.  I’m left with more questions than answers… but I think that’s what Breuer wanted.

You should make every effort to go see this show, but only if you are invested in theatre, have read A Doll’s House before, and aren’t offended by Satyrs with giant phallic costume pieces.  It runs through Sunday at ArtsEmerson and then the show retires forever.  This is most definitely something that we’ll be talking about for many years to come.