Henrik Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE — Page 2

There was a recent Off-Broadway production by the experimental group Mabou Mines that had all the women played by actresses over six feet tall, and all the men played by actors under five feet. That same production is coming ot the Court Theatre in Chicago this spring.

McTeer made very moment in that real and believeable. Her Nora's evolution and unraveling was very gradual and ultimately devastating.

The Mabou Mines production was clever and interesting for the most part and the final twist in the last 15 minutes will blow you away -- but with a running time of three hours (longer than some traditional productions of it), it often drags and meanders and loses effectiveness. Generally speaking these sorts of deconstructions need to be cut to be clean and efficient so that the directorial conceits can have maximum impact. Stretched over that much time, ideas that original seemed fresh, began to just feel gimmicky and monotonous. There were two intermissions and a sizeable chunk of the audience left at each one, such that there were only about 40 of us left for the final act (down from 100 or so). I couldn't blame them. Most of that audience at St. Anns Warehouse are sophisticated veteran thearegoers who already knew the play quite well and after an hour of tall ladies ducking through small door frames and crawling around on the stage, the production's points about male patriarchy in society had been made abundantly clear and been run into the ground. It would have been far more effective as a 90 minute intermissionless piece.

---