Mabou Mines Dollhouse

We see a space full of back-stage clutter. An elegant Chinese woman walks to the middle, bows in a spotlight, walks to a piano and starts to play as slowly red curtains unfurl to cover the clutter. If you weren't already aware, this slow, ritualistic opening would clearly indicate that this was to be no ordinary version of Ibsen's A Doll's House.

When the play proper starts, the set and props are indeed of miniature proportions and all the male actors are of small stature, matching the scale. The women, by contrast, are of normal height and thus have to bend or crawl through doors.

The voices and the acting style are another shock. It's all played in wildly exaggerated Norwegian accents with florid melodramatic poses and sometimes even a separate movement for each word. It takes a while to get used to, but once I began to see Lee Breuer's concept as a version of the play done by manipulating female dolls and Action Man figures it began to cohere.

And where is Ibsen in all this? Surprisingly present much of the time. True, I don't remember a wildly passionate (and wildly funny) raw sex scene between Krogstad and Mrs Linde in the original, but then I also don't remember Dr Rank's final exit being as moving as seeing him carried out like a child, cradled in the arms of the maid disguised as Death.

There are levels of exaggeration here that take things to extremes. Never have I seen a more doll-like Nora, both in voice and movement, which gives the magnificent Maude Mitchell's transformation from plaything to mature woman even greater impact. The great final scene between Nora and Torvald (an immensely strong Mark Povinelli) is literally played as grand opera and astonishingly effective it is too, using the theatre itself to wonderful effect.

I admit that I still wasn't sure about it all at the interval. A lot of suddenly empty seats indicated that many people were unwilling to give the second half a chance. For a while we seemed to have arrived at Carry On Up The Doll's House, including a very funny bit with the pianist taking offence at a line about the Chinese. Then another startling stage transformation and we're into the operatic sequence with Ibsen coming thorough very strongly.

The final moment may not have quite the impact of the door slam that echoed around the world but this audacious, startling, nightmarish, theatrical and eye-opening production will echo around my brain for a long time to come. Someone muttered 'underwhelming' to me in the interval; by the end the right word was overwhelming.