In the Realm of the Trolls

By T.E. Kalem

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!"

In modern parlance, "Look out for No. 1." Which, except for an affecting reunion with his dying mother (Gloria Foster), is exactly how Peer conducts his life.

In a sense, Part I forecloses an epoch. Ibsen encompasses the dying out of old legends and old gods, the anachronism of the early 19th century Byronic romantic hero and the ushering in of urban industrial society with its hard-nosed pragmatism.

Presciently modern, Ibsen foresaw that collectivized man would make egocentric quests for identity and searches for self. Peer's quest for self-definition becomes a tale of tepid damnation. The suave, cynical Peer of Part II (played with acute perceptivity by Gerry Bamman) defines himself by what he does and not by what he is. And what he does is always tainted by easy accommodation and the habit of incessant compromise. He moves from trading slaves out of Charleston, S.C., and shipping pagan idols to China to reigning as a prophet in the Moroccan desert, finally ending up crowned "the Emperor of Self in a Cairo mad house, with a wreath of straw.

Back in Norway, old and ailing, Peer meets a mysterious stranger in a black business suit. This is the Button Molder (Walter Atamaniuk), who tells him he is to be melted down as "damaged goods" and recast with "the mass of humanity." Essentially, the Button Molder likens Peer to those whom Dante consigned to Limbo: "That caitiff choir of the angels, who were not rebellious, nor were faithful to God; but were for themselves." Peer flees to the mountain hut where Solveig, ever faithful and now blind, cradles him in her arms. But neither Ciulei's direction nor Fiorenzo Carpi's astringent dissonant music makes this a redemptive moment. It is a requiem for a lost soul.

The audacity of this Guthrie offering brings honor to the U.S. theater. It also reminds us of what an intrepid culture hero Henrik Ibsen was. He strove mightily against the confines of a narrow provincial society to free the spirit and light up the mind. All of his plays are the sounds of chains snapping.

-- By T.E. Kalem This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.