Doll's House

With a woman poised to step into the Whitehouse, you wouldn't think there was much more to say about Ibsen's Doll's House, especially by an American. But Lee Breuer – whose award-winning production of the 19th Century classic forms the dramatic centre-piece (alongside David Greig's The Bacchae) of this year's Edinburgh International Festival – would disagree.

And presumably his cast of dwarves in the male roles and towering, six and a half foot women would too. Because that is exactly what this avant garde legend has done with this dusty classic so beloved of school curriculums and provincial reps. "I got these wonderful actors and they never get a chance to play classical roles like this. They are playing melodrama but the fact they are short-statured, a lot of it becomes parody," deadpans Breuer.

But for all his modesty, the concept of this statuesque Norah, played by Maude Mitchell tripping over these literally little men in her life, cramped into a diminutive set built to their scale, is an idea approaching that overused term genius. Indeed, he was the recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation's so-called 'genius' Fellowship back in 1997. Certainly, as a neat visual metaphor for the play's proto-feminist themes it's hard to top.

"I was tremendously interested in this idea of turning a tragedy into a comedy and bring a contemporary irony to bear on it [the play] – what is a comedy, what is a tragedy - and when you look at things tragedy and comedy get all mixed up. I was looking for a way to modernise what was considered to be the classic bourgeois tragedy.

"The original play is a little too long and a little too overstated and we've heard a lot of the issues. But you know we think we've heard it all before but in a way the issues are still very alive. It needs to have a new point of view and a new technique to engage with contemporary audiences again and that's what we tried to do by this rather radical staging."

Breuer is no stranger to radicality. Formed in New York in 1970 with the composer Philip Glass among others, his Mabou Mines company were heirs to a theatrical counter culture spawned by radical groups such as the Diggers who used drama as a political tactic from Haight Ashbury to the Left Bank. The company's formation was a bid to keep that rebellious spirit alive.

"Many of us had worked together in the sixties and we'd had six or seven years of playing around, to get know each other and work together. The sixties was the most radical period that the country had ever experienced that century and the seventies was a kind of a flop period. So we really felt that we had issues, we knew who we were talking to, and it was getting harder and harder to find people to talk to. So we started spending more time in Europe, we felt more at home in Europe than we ever felt in the United States. I felt the plays communicated better in Europe," recalls Breuer.

Despite his professed Europhilia he is still an astute, if troubled, observer of his own country. "I have been concerned with women's issues for a long, long time," he says. "I really feel it's the most interesting political thing going on in the United States at the moment. I had done a play focusing on women's issues earlier and it worked out very well. You know, being an American is very difficult, our whole foreign policy is very prejudicial."

But here at Skinny towers, the only pre-judgement we are making is that this one's a keeper. Don't be the little man about it, get along there and see some avant garde theatre at its very best.