Did you know that Henrik Ibsen is the second most produced playwright across the world (behind William Shakespeare, of course)? I didn’t until I read it in the playbill for the CSC’s arresting new production/adaptation of Peer Gynt, which I had the privilege of seeing on Thursday night.
I can’t say Peer Gynt is my favorite Ibsen work, though I gather some people consider it his masterpiece. My personal Ibsen favorite remains A Doll’s House (I had the privilege of seeing Janet McTeer in the lead for a terrific Broadway production back in the 1990s). Peer Gynt strays far from the traditional narrative chronology, with the lead character essentially dying before our eyes while philosophizing and dreaming all while his ship is slowing sinking. The production is loud, dramatic and angst ridden. It is also ethereal and illuminating. As is usually the case at CSC, the performers were all excellent and well cast. As Peer Gynt, Gabriel Ebert turned in a performance that was so intense and muscular that it felt worthy of an olympic gold medal for boxing.
A positive review in the New York Times (and the knowledge that the play had been stripped down to a manageable two hour length) inspired me to see this compelling production. I’d be curious to see how faithful John Doyle’s adaptation is to the original. (The only other production of Peer Gynt I’ve seen was decades ago, at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, and I really don’t recall much of the narrative at all from that production.) This impressive CSC staging sent chills down my spine at times, and that would probably be what Henrik Ibsen intended.
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