News/Events

Presentation of Obie for Direction:
Who would have suspected that Ibsen's most radical play could profit so much by a radical rethinking? Who would have taken Ibsen's title literally and turned a genteel household into a doll's house, complete with miniature sofa, chairs, and men? Who would have imagined that sweet, chirpy Nora would tower over her diminutive husband? What could have been just a gimmick became a powerful tool for reimagining and renovating Ibsen's attack on sexual conventions. By dramatizing the disorientation of giant women in a suddenly unfamiliar place, this production literally shrunk a middle-class household down to size. For allowing us to see a man's world for what it is, the judges have awarded an Obie to: LEE BREUER for his direction of DollHouse.

Lee Breuer

Presentation of Obie for Performance:
This actor's mission: to take on one of the theatre's legendary nineteenth century roles in a rigorously stylized production that placed its central character in a quivering realm between camp and pathos, infusing the gestures of antique melodrama with an intense emotional realism. For an actor to succeed at this tricky balance would be admirable; to watch her triumph at it was breathtaking. For her unforgettable portrayal of Ibsen's Nora in Mabou Mines' DollHouse the judges have awarded an Obie to: MAUDE MITCHELL.

Maude Mitchell

Mabou Mines Dollhouse opened at St. Anne's Warehouse on November 11, 2003 and extended through December 14th. A critical smash in New York, it was a hit at the Ibsen Festival in Olso in the Fall of 2004 and will be touring the US and Europe throughout 2005.

The New York Times - "If you've been lucky enough to see the work of Lee Breuer over the years you know that he's a wizard-director, an alchemist who blends ideas, genres, styles, texts and technologies to make new kinds of theater...The whole experience [of Mabou Mines Dollhouse] is so fascinating - thrilling here, confounding there - that it must be seen."

The Village Voice - "DollHouse thrillingly re-establishes the seething, self-referential theatricality of Ibsen's realism...Nora dances the tarantella as if her life depends on it...The life of our theater depends on such daringly tarantellian directors as Breuer."

Newsday - "[T]he production has an impressive and affecting grasp of the emotional arc of the play. Its concluding coup de theatre is one of those awesome homemade spectacles at which Mabou Mines excels. The troupe takes the play's signature finale and re-imagines it, as they have the entire play, in a way that's surprising, insightful, and unexpectedly moving."

Time Out NY - "While issues of proportionality and vaudeville are constantly being explored, the character's heartache is always visible under the surface."