Brilliant Twists
Two Westside productions cleverly rework classic tales
By Don Shirley
Women walk away from marriage, seeking greater meaning for their lives, in Mabou Mines Dollhouse and Charles Mee's Iphigenia. Although both plays are based on classics, these two Westside productions are strikingly, brilliantly different from previous renditions of these stories.
Lee Breuer's Mabou Mines Dollhouse, adapted by the director and his star Maude Mitchell from Ibsen's A Doll's House, banishes the pre-cinematic realism that seemed so groundbreaking when the play was born (1879). Instead, his style is rooted in popular stage genres of that original era - melodrama and opera. Add an ingenious casting and design concept, sexual burlesque, and occasional breaking of the fourth wall, and you've got one of the most bountifully entertaining mash-ups of a stage classic in years.
The play's theatrical universe is clearly established by an elegant unfurling of several lush curtains, accompanied by pianist Ning Yu. Then we watch as stagehands erect the large dollhouse in which most of the action takes place. Its proportions are such that Mitchell's Nora and the other women have to stoop to enter. But the men and children don't have that problem - they're played by dwarfs.
Yes, Nora's husband Torvald (Mark Povinelli or, at last Saturday's matinee, Nic Novicki), the family friend (Ricardo Gil), and the blackmailing villain (Kristopher Medina) are significantly shorter than the women. Occasionally, the women lift the men, even as the men's words are belittling the women.
Mitchell's Nora is an extreme flibbertigibbet with a squealing voice and fluttery body language, like a hyperactive girl playing house. When actresses attempt more realism in this role, Torvald's gauche condescension is hard to believe. But in this consciously artificial arena, his patronizing words are paradoxically more credible.
The movements of all the actors are stylized almost to the point of dance. Stark lighting enhances the intensity of the artifice, as do the strains of Grieg played by pianist Yu. Dream sequences go wild.
The ending makes the rest of the play look tame. When Nora finally comprehends the shame of her marriage, her voice drops a couple of octaves, she sheds her clothes and her tresses, and the tone shifts from melodrama and farce to opera. Across the back of the stage, 18 boxes in an opera hall suddenly appear, each occupied by male and female puppets who visibly root for their own genders in the final debate between Nora and Torvald - a debate set to music by Eve Beglarian and partially sung by the prerecorded voices of soprano Lauren Skuce and baritone Peter Stewart.
This ending is remarkably poignant, especially considering some of the high jinks that have preceded it. Ibsen's point seems more momentous than ever.
Mee's Iphigenia is no more realistic than Dollhouse, but it's on a much more intimate scale and takes about half the time (indeed, one more scene might be useful). It begins with ruminations by Agamemnon (Troy Dunn, who played the same king in City Garage's Agamemnon earlier this year) that sound precisely tailored to the dilemma that W now faces in Iraq - except, of course, that W presumably never thinks about offering his daughters to the war effort, which is the sacrifice demanded of Agamemnon.
Yet the play eventually moves far beyond its discursive beginning and contemporary dress and references and evokes the original Greek emotions. The chorus of GIs and scatterbrained bridesmaids get some choice moments, as do Iphigenia (Crystal Clark) and her anguished mother (Marie-Françoise Theodore). Frederíque Michel's direction is exquisitely nuanced.
Iphigenia ultimately accepts her wartime fate - at least she'll be remembered as someone other than plain old Mrs. Achilles. Will the Bush twins now accept her challenge and sign up for service in Baghdad?
Published: 12/07/2006
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