![]() ![]() Somewhere in the onion layers of “Peer Gynt” is a profound analysis of that sentiment, just waiting for audiences to tease it out.People from all over the world have enjoyed crosswords for many years, more recently in the form of an online era where puzzles and crosswords are widely available across thousands of different platforms, every single day.Ĭrosswords are among one of the most popular types of games played by millions of people across the world every day. ![]() “Own yourself truly” is the trolls’ motto. And the appealing Huppuch shows comic chops and a supple voice that breathes warmth into songs by composer and sound designer Ryan Rumery (whose music ranges from pretty acoustic numbers to Tom Waits-style oddities).ĭavid Zinn’s ramshackle set is suitably off-kilter, complete with tilted proscenium Darrel Maloney's lighting and projections add simple but effective textures, and costume designer Christina Wright dresses Peers, trolls and trollops with pizazz. Roberts brings a knowing cool and has one of the funniest moments as she rolls out a prop “mountain range,” sets its brakes and gives the audience a “Got a problem with that?” glare. Gavigan, with his leading-man looks, serves as first-stringer (Peer 1?) in the title role, while the tall, offbeat Moreno tag-teams as everyone from the older Peer to the Devil, and the compact Zes lends endlessly quirky (and funny) physicality to his own Peer and others. The cast is utterly game and alarmingly versatile throughout. Vignettes featuring a stuttering pal of Peer’s and a helmeted, spastic man in an insane asylum are pretty much just offensive in terms of those elements, though the scenes themselves stir guilty laughs. Some of the ethnic stereotypes are more problematic. The latter gambit is dicey but forgivable. well, you haven’t.)Īnd sometimes it goes splat. (If you’ve never seen a three-headed green creature take a leak onstage. There are moments of comic nirvana: A scene recast as an old movie that devolves into deliberately bad lip-syncing (a la Woody Allen’s “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?), or another that has the troll king returning as an oldster hobbling on a walker. In this wildly theatrical production, Schweizer and Co. Here, as in the original, an aimless and arrogant Peer leaves his poor mom Ase behind as he crashes a wedding, takes one potential bride into the mountains and abandons her, finds another (much scarier) one in the three-headed troll king’s creepy realm, escapes to various points east (Egypt, Morocco), and returns in time to lose his mom and possibly find his lost love.Īll the while, Peer seems to be searching out the narrow path between discovering his true self and indulging in simple self-satisfaction, while “peeling the onion” that is his life. (In a scene aboard a storm-tossed ship, a champagne-sipping phantom assures one of the three actors playing Peer, “The hero never dies this early in the show.” To which Peer replies, “Just when you least expect it - a critic!”)Īs many linguistic liberties as Schweizer takes with Ibsen - such phrases as “I’m dead meat” and “be very cool” obviously are loose translations - he shows admirable fealty to the storyline. I could be wrong about this (remember, I have a sack over my head), but I think even I might’ve been onstage at one point. ![]() Where: Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, UCSD campus Schweizer, a lifelong “Peer” devotee who has staged the piece many times over the decades, pares it down to 140 minutes and five performers - Danny Gavigan, Birgit Huppuch, Luis Moreno, Kate Cullen Roberts and Evan Zes - but keeps all 50 characters. Ibsen, who went on to write such classics as “Hedda Gabler” and “A Doll’s House” when he once again had his wits (if not his wit) about him, conceived “Peer Gynt” as a five-hour epic for 50 actors. ![]() Meanwhile, we just trip.Īnd yet nothing is simple about this saga. Here’s the simplest way to summarize it: The hero goes on a journey. Of course, Ibsen’s story is fairly unhinged to begin with. Say this about director David Schweizer’s extremely freewheeling adaptation of the 1876 Henrik Ibsen dramatic poem: It’s way more fun than the dour Norwegian’s original tale of multi-headed trolls and ever-peeling onions and a globetrotting goofball likely deserves. I’m going to venture into the first person for just a moment here (since “Peer Gynt” breaks so many theater conventions, including the fourth wall and possibly several walls not yet identified) to note that rarely have so many people turned to me after a show and said with looks of sympathy: “Good luck with that.” You can toss a sack of adjectives at “Peer Gynt,” and this description-defying La Jolla Playhouse show will simply dump them out, dice them up and throw the sack back over your head for good measure. ![]()
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