PEER GYNT. To 24 August.
Edinburgh International Festival
PEER GYNT
by Henrik Ibsen traanslated (into German) by Christian Morgenstern and Georg Schulte-Frohlinde Adapted by Peter Stein and Botho Strauss
Berliner Ensemble at the Royal Lyceum Theatre To 24 August 2004
Sun-Tue 7pm
Runs 3hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 0131 473 2000
www.eif.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 August
Sprawling, messy, magnificent play and production.Both the supreme shows in this year's International Festival drama programme are pieces their authors never intended for actual production. Both are long, and both encompass a range of styles and emotions ranging from intense stillness to rough comedy. And while the Ibsen of Peer Gynt had a very different view of the world from the Paul Claudel of The Satin Slipper, both plays bustle with human life, its tragedy and humour.
After a series of historical plays, Ibsen wrote his two mega-dramatic poems, Brand about a resolute man, Peer Gynt ('Per Gunt' in German voice) about someone without an identity. Though long, both are characterised by memorable episodes. And Ibsen went on from them to create both dramas of contemporary life and, later, symbolic actions (of which Peer is a clear precursor) set in realistic drawing-rooms and studies, both showing supreme organisation of plot, symbol and theme.
That's already there in the 3 stages of Peer's life. As is the contemporary feel. Take the young fantasising, rebellious Peer out of the Norwegian woods and place him in a 1960s univertsity and you have the revolutionary who, by middle age, is likely to have become a free-market capitalist as has the second-stage Peer.
That generation's only just reaching the final, private stretch of life, where Peer searches for his soul to avoid the button-moulder who threatens to melt him down to nothing. Ibsen shows three ages of man as vividly as Shakespeare describes seven.
Peter Zadek's breathtaking production doesn't go for narrow realism. Peer and the bride he steals escape bare-breasted through the fog-bound mountains where their pursuers are wrapped in overcoats. What's expressed is the freedom they feel - which, in her case, sours as he shrugs her off.
The piece could be called 'Peer Gynt and the Women', for they define his life. Principally his mother Aase, whose plight is (more clearly than in most productions) economic. Both Peer and his father have brought their farm to ruin, and Aase to an impoverished old-age. Peer, outlawed by the community (something else pointedly shown in this version), cannot help.
He sets up house outside society, with the piled-up furniture of the evicted, as Aase sits alone. Her death takes us by surprise. Angela Winkler has been stoically enduring life when her son visits, lifting her over his shoulder, talking to her until her notices the silence. Winkler's unshowy, deeply-felt performance would be enough by itself to distinguish this production.
Then there's the good angel Solveig. Annett Renneberg is apparently quiet and unassertive, but increasingly established in her moral determination, her firm-centred love for Peer, which moves her from an obedient child in her own family to faithul wife and mother-subsitutue. After a lifetime of cavorting with women, carrying them over his shoulder, Peer ends cradled on Solveig's lap. It's a mark of the production's integrity it can use Grieg's Solveig songs without softening towards sentimentality.
Modern German playwright Botho Strauss has reworked the final act, placing Solveig in a tower-block flat - a new town has been built where once stage-hands erected an overtly theatrical hillock for young Peer and Solveig. When Peer discovers his lack of a core self by peeling an onion, it's in a fast-food stall. Gerd David's superbly tactful Button Moulder is a case-carrying member of the bureaucratic class, a civil servant from Hell maybe, but polite and helpful with it.
Maybe in the central adventures Zadek's production isn't at its best - despite a sexily gold-digging Anitra, a pantomime horse and a comic sinking-ship, the firm-footed style possibly inhibits Peer's crazy heydays. Here the production's merely very good. Elsewhere it's outstandingly, astoundingly, intensely moving and gripping.
This is the best Berliner Ensemble visit Edinburgh's had in years and this year's International Festival drama programme the most exciting since 1979 and the Rustaveli company's Shakespeare and Brecht.
Aase: Angela Winkler
Peer Gynt: Uwe Bohm
Aslak/Pig/Monkey/Sphinx/Apis/Ship's Cook: Ronald Zehrfeld
Mads Moen/Young Troll/Slave/Sphinx: Steffen Roll
Ingrid/Monkey/Arab Girl: Deborah Kaufmann
Old Peasant/Troll/Old Woman: Ruth Gloss
Cook/Ancient Chief Troll/Overseer/Captain/Man: Hans-Peter Reinecke
Father Moen/Chief Troll/Herr von Eberkopf/Priest/Thin Man: Veit Schubert
Mother Moen/Herdgirl/Bird/Monkey/Arab Girl/ Old Woman: Angela Gilges
Young Girl/Young Troll/Herdgirl/Bird/Monkey/Arab Girl: Adina Vetter
Young Girl/Woman in Green/Monkey/Arab Girl/ Sphinx: Judith Strossenreuter
Young Girl/Herdgirl/Sister in Green/Bird/Lion/Anitra: Anouschka Renzi
Young Man/Young Troll/Master Cotton/Slave/Horse/Sphinx/Magistrate: Gerold Stroher
Young Man/Dovre Master/Ugly Child/Arab Servant/ Sphinx/Hassan/Old Man: Mathias Kopetzki
Old Man/Boatman/Auctioneer: Benjamin Cabuk
Solveig/Monkey/Arab Girl: Annett Renneberg
Solveig's Father/Voice in the Dark/Begriffenfeldt/Strange Passenger/Button Moulder: Gerd David
Solveig's Mother/Troll/Kari/Old Woman: Ursula Hopfner
Helga/Monkey/Arab Girl: Alice Kornitzer
Barmaid/Pig/Arab Servant/Arab Girl: Ann-Marie von Low
Sausage Seller: Peter Donath
Director: Peter Zadek
Designer/Costume: Karl Kneidl
Lighting: Ulrich Eh, Karl Kneidl
Music/Music Director: Georg Klein
Choreography: Reinhild Hoffmann
Maska and Sculpture: Christophe Ghislain
Dramaurg: Barbel Jaksch
Assistant director: Rosee Riggs
Assistant choreographer: Linda Gayford
2004-08-24 10:37:27