Slam it good.

It's possible that I believe in miracles. Tonight I saw Mabou Mines Dollhouse- you know, the one where the men are three-foot and change and the women are amazons. (I must say though, the press release oversold the height of the women.) Promising, yes? But halfway through the first act, I was starting to feel as if this was just one of those shows with nudity, and deliberate over-acting, and simulated sex acts, and goat-men, and ballet dancing flautists, and oh whatever. Just the same old shocking bag of tricks, and the silent-movie posturing with piano between was making it way too long. Like, I get what you're doing and I like it, but do we need so much of it? When we hit intermission at 9:50, there was serious audience attrition.

Fools. If you come to a Doll's House, you come for the last 10 minutes. Mabou Mine's last 10 minutes (or possibly 20, my sense of time was skewed), well....out of all the nasty sex avant-garde bla bla there rose a miracle. I won't describe it, but believe me, my mind was blown. As if during the previous two hours they'd just been distracting me while inserting a ballon into my skull in order to blow it up at the end. The amount of sheer crazy madness going on, the genuine shock and surprise at something terrifying and intense and new... Someone behind me was sobbing uncontrollably. So in its own way, it was very traditional. Just what you'd expect for three acts, and then you get punched in the face.

But I'm kind of worried about writing the review. First, there was a last-minute understudy sub, and I can't figure out who it was. Second, I have no idea how to refer to the male actors. I'm pretty sure "midget" is offensive, I don't know if "dwarf" is accurate, and I've never been able to bring myself to believe that any group would choose to refer to themselves as "Little People." I'll probably just call them "men under 3'4," which is suave, if not elegant.