PEER GYNT. To 10 March.
London
PEER GYNT
by Henrik Ibsen adapted by Baltasar Kormakur
Barbican (Pit) To 10 March 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7536
www.barbican.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 February
Visually adventurous, dramatically compelling production.
Despite its sprawling action, covering decades and continents, beside incorporating supernatural characters, Peer Gynt has worked well at chamber-scale in productions from John Barton to Terje Tveit. A small cast and spatial limitations provide a gravitational balance to the centrifugal variety of its spatial and temporal spread.
This Icelandic version (in English) causes a moment’s despondency when an institutional curtain opens, revealing institutional white tiles. Here is the mental hospital setting which allows and excuses all. But the device helps bind the action when events open with Peer’s first encounter with the Button Moulder, Ibsen’s final character, who threatens to melt Peer down for being neither saint nor great sinner.
When the Moulder allows him more time to find something about himself that will form the essential Peer, he takes Peer’s place on a hospital trolley. The unthinking taps Peer administers, followed with quick apologies, typify the handsome young figure’s inconsiderate nature.
For there’s an unpleasant tinge to Peer’s youthful wildness; the charisma kid is a bully as well. And Solveig, whose love is his salvation, is shorn of angelic qualities, becoming purely an innocent from the psychiatric in-tray.
As Peer’s youth and maturity are explored, the production sacrifices narrative clarity. But Kormakur’s perception outdistances objections. There’s the cheeky simplicity, reminiscent of Ken Campbell, of an instant blizzard outside the fish-filleting factory where Peer tells his whoppers about wrestling a deer. There’s the flourish of a sauna where capitalists, following Peer’s address, with its United Nations-style simultaneous translations, are rubbed not with oil but blood.
As they spray banknotes the blood of others becomes these war-profiteers’ own, their advance turning into battlefield slaughter, leaving blood and banknotes littering the floor. These remain, a kind of epitaph for Peer, through the closing scenes.
After the fury, a quiet consummation; throughout Kormakur uses music skilfully - the death of Peer’s mother and wisps of Solveig’s song from Grieg’s Peer Gynt score, besides other sources. Finally, the bodies of Peer and Solveig reach an unexpected union, she vertical in bed, he horizontal on a bier; the final image of a daring, compelling production
.Peer Gynt: Björn Hlynur Haraldsson
Solveig: Brynhildur Gudjónsdóttir
Kari/Herd Girl/Trumpeterstraale: Edda Arnljótsdóttir
Woman in Green/Herd Girl/Professor Begriffenfeldt: Gudrún Snaefridur Gísladóttir
Button Moulder/The Great Between/Child/Monsieur Ballon: Ingvar E. Sigurdsson
Aase/Herd Girl: Ólafía Hrönn Jónsdóttir
Groom/Von Eberkopf/Pen/Scrawny Person: Ólafur Egill Egilsson
Solveig’s Father/Old Man of Dovre/Master Cotton: Ólafur Darri Ólafsson
Director: Baltasar Kormakur
Designer: Gretar Reynisson
Lighting: Pall Ragnarsson
Sound: Sigurdur Bjola, Ester Asgeirsdottir
Costume: Helga I Stefansdottir
Voice: Neil Swain
2007-03-04 11:49:54