Between trolls and men, Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt' returns - review

Peer Gynt is bad news. The protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s iconic 19th-century play abducts a bride from her groom and consumes cow-pie, if served in a gold bowl. A Norwegian trader without scruples, he helps Christian missionaries get to foreign lands to shatter idols, for a fee. Peer then replaces said broken idols with intact ones, for a price. 

In 2014, Norwegian director Alexander Mork-Eidem took things even further. In his production, Gynt sold guns to Palestinian terrorists and trafficked in Ukrainian women. 

There is more to Gynt. Played by Jonathan Shimony in this production by Seminar Hakibbutzim acting students, Shimony offers a dashing Gynt. When his mother Aase (Noa Kerem) is dying, he soothes her fear by pretending they are going sledding. When Cairo madhouse inmates crown him emperor, he hears their woes, hoping he might help.

But he doesn’t. Each failure peels another idea of who Gynt is away as we watch. Gynt is not a husband to Solveig (Noa Cohen), who loves him and waits for him. He is not an heir to the Troll King (Mika Sack), despite the gold bowl offered. He is no emperor of the Orient, ruling over an Egyptian mental facility. 

How many Peer-selves are there to lose? Where will this process of creating more Gynts, and shedding them, lead us? 

Actors use their collective presence ingeniously

DIRECTOR AMIT Epshtein offers some brilliant solutions to the riddles that Gynt poses. With its wealth of characters, locations, plots, and ideas, Peer Gynt is a grand kaleidoscope. Its basic plot concerns a young Norwegian man from an improvised family with a vivid imagination. 

Shunned by his peers, he violates social norms and is further ostracized. Following the death of his mother, he leaves home, spends years in the Orient, and returns to Norway to die. Peer Gynt requires time to tell properly and offers insights into what it is that “time,” represented in the play by a skilled Button Moulder, actually does.

“Your grave’s been dug, your coffin’s on file,” the Button Moulder told Shimon Finkel, the first to play the role of Peer Gynt in Hebrew at Habima in 1952. “Your corpse will provide for the worms in style,” he added. 

The actors use their collective presence ingeniously to shape the space. They make sounds and noises to introduce barn animals and storms. When they all dance together, they form a single line that pushes out anyone who is a little different – in this case, a groom (Aviv Ben) about to lose his bride to Gynt. Ben deserves a nod for excelling in this comic role.

This unusual high level of responsiveness builds entire worlds that we, as the audience, see born before our very eyes. A young actress can play a goat in one scene, then an impish troll, then a madman, then a ship’s captain – this playfulness is a stage expression of the Peer Gynt charm. It’s a mercurial fluidity of selves expressed on stage as it brings to life one of the greatest poetic expressions ever written about this theme.

In one key scene, Gynt trudges along with a series of identical Gynts behind him and a similar series mirroring him up front. All his former and future selves are present as he apes around, trying to determine who is the real self, and who is the fake.

This iconic play has been adapted to fit our own times. The Norwegian village wedding music was changed from Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” to “Ya Nas” by Bachar Mar-Khalifé. The creature Gynt fathers with the troll princess squeals threats at him, then returns to the cellphone screen’s glow. The beautiful, sensitive translation by Dori Parnes recaptures in Hebrew the different verses Ibsen created for each scene. 

This poetic achievement was badly criticized when the play was first performed in Norway. Ibsen responded in a very Peer Gynt manner. “The conception of poetry in our country, in Norway,” Ibsen said, “shall shape itself according to this book.” 

“Peer Gynt” will be performed Wednesday, December 27, at 8 p.m.; Thursday, December 29, at 11:30 a.m.; and Friday, December 30, at 8 p.m. NIS 60 per ticket. The theater is at 9 Ahad Ha’am St., Tel Aviv. Call (03) 690-2323 to reserve, or visit smkb.ac.il/theater. 

The three-hour Hebrew performance has one intermission. Those evacuated from the South or North can attend for free; email galiasulin7@gmail.com to learn more.