Review: Peer Gynt by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
You might get lost in the tidy space of St. Ed's Mary Moody Northen Theatre if you haven't done your homework before you get to the theatre. Peer Gynt is not your dependable old social realism from Ibsen. This story is a wild ride of fable, myth and allegory that takes you across the world and through an entire prankish life, written by a young dramatist who had escaped bleak Norway for the dazzling sunscapes of Italy.
The attractive printed program given to you has a full page on the august poet and translator Robert Bly, but no synopsis of the action, other than a list of the locales of the 34 scenes, ranging from "the farm" to Morocco to Cairo and back to the mountains of Norway. For more than that, see the ALT profile of the drama, "The Wild Striving of Peer Gynt," published here on February 8.
Peer Gynt, both the play and the character played by Jacob Trussell, moves at speed, between a canter and a gallop throughout. The single possible exception to that rhythm is the comic scene that opens the second half, when Peer recaps about 30 or 40 years of successful mercantile career, spinning his tale to flamboyantly made-up and costumed stereotypical gentlemen from France, Germany, England and Norway (the last of them, tellingly, a good-natured drunkard). The drama has a swiftness of incident and of dialogue, essentially all of it in verse either blank or rhymed in couplets.
Jacob Trussell inhabits this madcap character with decisive assurance, both verbal and corporal, and utter conviction. He's an energy mill and huge fun to watch. Director Ev Lunning, Jr., anchors Trussell with Equity members Sheila M. Gordon, Peer's widowed, often distraught and foolishly fond mother, and Ben Wolfe in several roles, including that of the gigantic puppet Troll King (who reappears, much reduced if not humbled, in the final act).
The dozen other members of the ensemble turn in the action like glittering, changing figures of a kaleidoscope, often singing commentary or accompanying themselves on guitar, violin, and clarinet. Ibsen's text identifies 70 or more characters (many of them plural: "dancing girls," "troll-maidens and troll-urchins," "wedding guests," etc.), so everyone in the ensemble has at least one memorable figure to portray. Particularly catching the eye were Lainey Murphy as Peer's abandoned but ever-hopeful beloved, Solveig; Sarah Burkhalter as Peer's troll-concubine; Kel Sanders as the looming skinny devil; and Duncan Coe as the button moulder, who's a sort of artisan grim reaper come to melt down Peer's imperfect soul.
The design, movement, costume and make-up in this staging are remarkable. Director Ev Lunning, Jr., makes the most of the Mary Moody Northen Theatre's theatre-in-the-square design, sending his actors free-wheeling around every available space. In Robert N. Schmidt's scenic design the furniture is minimal; setting and atmosphere are provided largely with props, costume and imagination. Steep corner aisles and high spaces become mountain crags, a cottage top, a hillside with cottage, the goblin's haunts, and a sailing ship struggling against a storm. Tara Cooper's make-up and hair design is extravagantly clever, especially for the national stereotype businessmen at Peer's table for the opening of the second half. (You've never seen hair as teased and shaped as on those estimable gentlemen!)
Even with all that movement and incident, Lunning and Trussell bring Peer at the very end to a credible and moving moment of realization and penitence. Ibsen's allegory of Peer as Everyman comes through. Despite all his wastrel ways and wrong-headedness, Peer wins our sympathy and we can embrace the message of his heavily symbolic return, chased by the devil and oblivion, to the arms of those who always loved him.
Review by Barry Pineo for Austin Chronicle, February 18
Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com, February 18
EXTRA
Peer Gynt
by Henrik Ibsen
Mary Moody Northen Theatre
