Arts Editor Dottie Ashley sat down at a Starbucks with Mabou Mines DollHouse director Lee Breuer to talk about changes to the Ibsen remake: Sex scene? In. Clothes? Off. Forty-five minutes and a second intermission? Gone.
And, in this pandering age of ours, it was good to read this quote from Breuer:
"I have a message to those who walked out of the play after the first act. I don't want them there if they can't wait for the main character's all-important transformation from a woman who behaves in a man-pleasing, child-like manner to someone who realizes herself as a mature human being."
From our perch in the audience last night, the result was a great success. We had no idea the changes were coming, but the audience seemed to respond well to everything it saw.
An aside: We ran into friends there, and at intermission one of them mentioned that they were starving and were going to duck out and go to dinner rather than catch the end of the play. "We get it -- it's about gender roles," one said. I was wildly disappointed by this attitude, but then after the play, there they were. They had decided to stick around after all, and they were greatly rewarded for it.
Folks, art is like life. You get out of it what you put into it. -- dc
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