PEER GYNT
by Henrik Ibsen
When he wrote Peer Gyntin 1867, Ibsen did not dream that his epic poem would ever be performed onstage. Uncut, it contains five acts and 38 scenes. Its panoramic sweep embraces four continents: Europe, Africa, North America and Asia. The action unfolds on mountain crests and sun-bleached deserts, within limpid fjords and amid howling sea storms. These requirements have proved daunting to most productions, except that in recent decades stage technology has become much more sophisticated. So has the audience, schooled by the movies' crosscutting and swift evolution of scenes.
Even so, a presentation of Peer Gynt is a rarity. Only 16 full-scale productions are listed for the U.S since 1906. The two-part, five-hour production now enlivening the stage of Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater becomes a 17th of considerable distinction. The scenic effects are accomplished with stunning finesse (heightened by Santo Loquasto's virtuoso set design of mirrored panels). Rumanian Director Liviu Ciulei (pronounced Leave-you Chew-lay), artistic director of the Guthrie, never scants the intellectual, philosophical and refreshingly comical ramifications of the play. This Peer Gynt only fitfully moves the heart, however, and that may be because Ciulei chooses to keep a tight Brechtian leash on emotion.
On one level, Peer Gynt is a series of picaresque adventures, a kind of Rapscallion's Progress as opposed to a Pilgrim's Progress. Yet the rich ambiguity of the play lies in the fact that Peer is some sort of pilgrim. In his most squalid escapades, he knows that he is sinning and fumblingly seeks redemptive grace and the meaning of existence. But since, like Scarlett O'Hara, he puts off thinking about the hard questions until tomorrow, he always loses his way. He traces an allegory of man's brief bewildering journey from his mother's womb to Mother Earth.
Throughout the play, Peer dichotomizes women. Those of maternal purity, he fears to touch. The accessible slut, he invariably beds. The young Peer of Part I (rather monotonously played by Greg Martyn) scoots off to a wedding feast held for one of his old flames (Jana Schneider). There he meets Solveig (Jossie de Guzman), a girl of 15 or 16 who captivates him but is skittish at his brusque advances. To the end of the play, she will be his undimmed light of love and will incredibly play the combined role of wife and mother figure without the literal consolations of either.
The key encounter in Part I is at the Troll King's lair. As half the floor of the Guthrie opens upward like the hold of a cargo ship, white fumes belch forth as from an anteroom to hell. The trolls are quite droll. They are dressed in inky black frock coats and robes, their heads are chalk-white and they sport Miss Piggy snouts. The Troll King (Frederick Neumann) immediately recognizes Peer as a closet troll and lays down the primal law of trolldom, which is the leitmotiv of the entire play. As rendered in Rolf Fjelde's lyrical English versification, it goes:
Among men, under the shining sky
They say: "Man, to yourself be
true!"
While here, under our mountain
roof,
We say: "Troll, to yourself be —
enough!"