`DOLLHOUSE' IS THE HOME OF EMOTIONAL PAIN.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

Well, this isn't your father's ``Doll's House.''

Or your grandfather's, best friend's, hypnotist's or LSD pusher's, either.

Nope, this fantastic take on Henrik Ibsen's proto-feminist staple, about a housewife who slams the door on her husband, thereby opening it to her gender, comes courtesy of avant- gardist Lee Breuer. Breuer's ``Mabou Mines DollHouse'' figures to seriously rattle the cages of any viewer at UCLA's Freud Playhouse who is savvy enough to brave it.

Also to stick it out. The Freud's opening-night audience thinned slightly at intermission. Those unfortunate blighters missed a depiction of Nora Helmer's celebrated exit so decadently trippy it would have given Ibsen a coronary.

As the accompanying photograph will indicate, the men of ``DollHouse'' -- among them a patronizing husband, a dying doctor and a blackmailing attorney -- are all played by actors who are around 4 feet tall. The women -- most notably Maude Mitchell's Nora Helmer -- hit the ruler at around 5 feet 9 inches. Doorways, furniture, props: all quite teensy. In other words, Nora has to live, oppressed, in the undersize doll house of her own fashioning -- which is no way to sustain a marriage.

The production's imagery and aural pleasures are nothing short of arresting. Set designer Narelle Sissons' facade is a versatile fold-up affair through which actors and stagehands alike can peek or maneuver. Surrounding blood-red curtains drop into place during the production's musical prologue. Mary Louise Geiger's lighting (strobes included) play a huge role, and pianist Ning Yu gets in on the action as well.

Within his cast, Breuer is both playing the visual contrasts to the hilt and subverting them. Small of stature and otherwise, Mark Povinelli's hugely smug Torvald Helmer pretty much cows Mitchell's Nora and everyone around him. The same holds true of Kristopher Medina's desperate Krogstad, the lawyer in Torvald's firm who blackmails Nora in an effort to keep his job. Reciprocal lust, depicted with a comic sense of the grotesque, gets free play, especially in the second act.

With Yu playing a constant medley of Greig piano works, the characters -- male and female -- are in nonstop musical motion. When Torvald has reason to exult, a stagehand picks him up and propels him skyward. Nora's catastrophe-

averting tarantella dance is done with the effect of a strobe. Truly, so many elements of this audacious ``DollHouse'' carry the imagery of dreams.

But whose dream (or nightmare) are we watching? My money says it's Torvald's, since he's the one abed, surrounded by a sea of puppets (designed by Jane Catherine Shaw), while Nora is giving him an operatic kiss-off. That climactic scene, which has Mitchell's high-perched Nora renouncing just about everything she owns, is played more for the shock value of imagery than for its words or sentiments. Which seems fitting, since Breuer is dealing with our senses over our minds.

He has, in Mitchell, an amazing centerpiece for his production. The actress and production's co-adapter mixes twittery girlishness, coquettishness and ultimately a backbone that we, the audience, don't necessarily anticipate. All the extras notwithstanding, her performance alone is worth the price of admission.

Mitchell is, the program informs us, at work on a compilation of interviews with notable actresses who have played Nora. It's a given that the author belongs in its pages.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

[e-mail]

MABOU MINES DOLLHOUSE - Three and one half stars

Where: UCLA Freud Playhouse, Westwood.

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Dec. 10.

Tickets: $42 to $60. [phone]

In a nutshell: Size does matter in Lee Breuer's wonderfully absurdest take on the Ibsen classic.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Small-statured men -- including smugly overbearing husband Torvald Helmer (Mark Povinelli, second from right) and dying Dr. Rank (Ricardo Gil) -- loom large over the women in their lives, among them Kristine Linde (Honora Fergusson Neumann, left) and Torvald's oppressed wife, Nora Helmer (Maude Mitchell), in ``Mabou Mines DollHouse.''