CONDUCTING a backstage tour during an impromptu rehearsal break. Lee Breuer can't conceal the glee he feels over his production of Dollhouse. an adaptation of Ibsen's classic.
Part huckster. Breuer commands cult-like devotion from those in his creative orbit. most of whom hang on his every word as though it were gospel from some madcap visionary.
In one corner he has puppet designer Jane Catherine Shaw rigging her 36 handcrafted Victorian marionettes into their mini-opera boxes; in another. he has composer Eve Beglarian banging out Christmas carols on a toy piano. Meanwhile. who stars as Nora and also serves as dramaturg. dispenses facts on Ibsen and Norwegian accents to the rest of the company. If only Breuer could round up his dwarfs. whose hectic schedules are proving logistically exasperating. perhaps he could settle his hyperactive nerves and finally take a seat.
What's that? Ibsen with midgets? Don't let the shrub of grey chest hair fool you: Breuer's as fearless a risk-taker as he was in 1970 when he co-founded Mabou Mines. along with Richard Foreman and the Wooster Group. has shaped and given impetus to today's American avant-garde theatre.
A philosopher in constant motion. Breuer is himself a whirligig performer. his conversation veering off in so many directions that it's not always easy to find the common thread. Particularly when the subject is as artistically complex as his deconstructed Dollhouse. a serious doll-and-puppet-filled parody.
"Like I did in Gospel at Colonus. where I cast black gospel singers in Sophocles' tragedy. and in my cross-gendered Lear with Ruth Maleczech. I'm trying to make a political statement without haranguing politics from the stage." he explains.
"The patriarchy is in reality three feet (91cm) tall. but has a voice that will dominate six-foot (182cm) women. Male power isn't dependent on physical size. At the same time we're exploring the metaphor from the woman's point of view. the way maternal love is lavished on these child-size men. which only infantilises them further."
Gender roles in bourgeois society. stunt the growth of both sexes. This central insight comes directly from Ibsen. though it has been eclipsed by Nora's groundbreaking journey. which culminates in the understanding that she has validity as a human being beyond her role of wife and mother.
Certainly. it was shocking in 1879 to see a woman abandon her family. turning a suspenseful melodrama into what George Bernard Shaw called "the end of a chapter in human history".
Ibsen stressed the universal aspect of Nora's revolt. which is why he rejected the plaudits given to him by feminists. At the Norwegian Society for Women's Rights. who always considered himself "more of a poet and less of a social philosopher than people generally tend to suppose". not merely Nora. After all. her husband Torvald and the children suffer the cruellest blows when she slams the door on her past and ventures out into a forbidding but unavoidable future.
Naturally. Breuer's literal-minded approach goes beyond semantics into staging. His adaptation conjures a domestic world in small scale. placing Ibsen's drama in a dollhouse. complete with mini-furniture. a hobbyhorse and a toy store's worth of dolls.
The production. has been provoking attention because of its little actors. not little props. Peter Dinklage. star of the sleeper film The Station Agent. was the original diminutive Torvald. having originated the role in New York in 2002. Captive of his own overdue success. he was forced to pull out. He was replaced by his understudy. the actor first cast as Dr Rank. a dwarf nearly 25cm smaller than the 135cm Dinklage. though just as handsome. with a face that is often compared with French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo's.
Povinelli is joined by equally small Ricardo Gil. who now plays Rank. and the relatively rangy (at 137cm) Kris Medina in the role of Nils Krogstad. So how do the "LPs". one of the acceptable terms according to the Little People of America website (lpaonline). feel about all the attention? According to producer Lisa Harris. who also plays Nora's brandy-nipping maid Helene. Dinklage was concerned that the production might "get too carnival". Video excerpts of his performance reveal. a sensitive portrait that. to a degree greater than the ensemble's other characterisations. errs on the side of realism rather than parody.
Povinelli. an LA-based actor whose resume includes regional stints in Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. seems most concerned with filling Dinklage's shoes though no one needs to remind him of the risks of exploitation.
"It's an incredibly psychotic profession that we're in. and when you have an obvious difference like I do. you can be sure that people are going to manipulate it for their own benefit."
Breuer's reputation as auteur was particularly reassuring to Povinelli and his diminutive colleagues. Gil. appreciates Dollhouse's "wide-ranging humour". which sends up not only gender hypocrisy but also overripe theatrical forms.
Still. painful memories are roused when the maid picks him up in his final scene. Though it's been explained that this is Rank's apotheosisa fantasy scene of Nora's lovelorn (and possibly syphilitic) confidant flying to his private Valhalla as a foreshadowing of his suicide. it's one of the moments when the joke revolves around size. Still. Gil claims his biggest concern is for Harris. in her eighth month of pregnancy. might not be the ideal candidate for lifting a 34kg man.
"I see it as a visual layer in a multilayered deconstruction. not as the central focus." he says. "In the entire play no one ever talks about how short we are. It's not like Lee has rewritten Ibsen to fit small people in it."
In fact. Breuer claims that between 90 and 95 per cent of the words in his adaptation are from the original. though he concedes that he did a "radical cut and paste". He rearranged the first act so that his dwarf trio enter the stage together and. transformed passages of dialogue into monologues inspired by Ingmar Bergman's Persona.
"I was totally fascinated when Bibi Andersson talked for 10 minutes into the camera and all Liv Ullmann did was listen." Breuer recollects. "So I said. 'Screw some of this dialogue.' which is really only one person talking anyway. Let's underscore it and let the actor perform it the way an opera singer would an aria."
Bergman isn't Breuer's only inspirational film source. Fellini occupies a central place in Breuer's imagination 'C and not simply because they both share a love of circus theatrics and dancing midget troupes. It's the ticklish balance between comedy and tragedy that Breuer so admires.
"One of my favourite films of all time is 8?" he says. "I was giggling all the way through it but I was ultimately moved. The same thing with Juliet of the Spirits. Fellini shows that the further you go into comedy. the deeper you can travel into sorrow."
"What separates me from postmodern directors today is the way most of them think that anything emotional is realism. My position is that emotions can be formally dealt with too. You can be formally sad. formally weeping. You don't have to be cold. cynical and Eurotrashy to be postmodern."
Assuming a doll-like persona throughout the play. Mitchell allows her faux Norwegian Betty Boop voice to drop as her character's consciousness crescendos into an assertion of autonomy.
Breuer turns the ending into an operatic puppet extravaganza. ("When in doubt. explaining what he calls his production's "phase transition".)
But what promises to be most haunting of all is the emotionalism of the male performances. which throw into relief the wounded integrity of their characters 'C a remarkable accomplishment given that the short-statured actors' schedules permitted only limited time for rehearsal. ("When I think that Stanislavski had 12 months to rehearse Seagull and that Brecht had 18 months to get Mother Courage's ass together." Breuer laments.)
"Because Torvald is so insecure. he feels that he has to fulfil every norm that society has set up for him. When things crumble. he begins to see that he has nothing real in his life. He's created a dollhouse. a world of make-believe. and without fully understanding the reasons. he finds himself devastated and lost." Povinelli says.
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