The last time I saw several countries at once, I was traveling around Europe and it took me a month. In the course of one recent evening, however, I found myself shivering in the snow-draped mountains of Norway and then smoking a hookah in Morocco in a room full of swirling belly dancers. I shook sand out of my parched shoes in the Sahara desert and wandered the narrow streets of Cairo. It was quite a trip, considering I didn’t have to make travel arrangements or fight my way through the airport. Thanks to the actors in SMU’s production of “Peer Gynt,” I didn’t even have to leave Dallas.
Director Sara J. Romersberger and the cast and crew recreated Hernik Ibsen’s adventurous tale based on Norwegian fairy tales and folklore. Gynt is an unremorseful, lying scoundrel who wanders the land. leaving a trail of mayhem behind him. His only creed is to be true to himself.
Ben Hollandsworth played the title character. His description in the opening scene of riding a wild buck off a cliff into icy water sent chills right through the room. Thus begins the tangled web of lies and debauchery that make Peer Gynt a likeable villain.
The adventure begins in his home village of Gudbrandsdal, Norway, where he runs off with a bride during her wedding party, only to leave her after the deed is done. Gynt is forced to flee, but not before meeting beautiful, innocent Solveig, who was played by Chloe Lackie. She is the only person who was charmed by his mischievous ways.
He finds his way to the Troll kingdom in the mountains, only to do the same to the Troll King’s beautiful daughter, perhaps not realizing just what he is up against with these monsters.
How grotesquely real the trolls looked! I could almost smell them, they were so vile. Their hideous warty faces and twisted noses and the tattered clothing draping their wretched bodies could peel paint off the walls.
We were then whisked off to Morocco, where a gang of orangutans surrounded Gynt. Or did they? Perhaps Gynt was so entangled in his imagination that reality was questionable.
The orangutan costumes were done in the style of “The Lion King,” with the actors using long wooden poles to control the puppets that hung from their necks. This style lent itself beautifully to the erratic motions of the apes.
Hollandsworth was flawless. His fear was palpable and it was difficult to determine where the acting ended and real panic began.
Fright gives way to deceit when Gynt finds the stolen goods of an emperor and passes himself off as an Arab sheik-prophet. He gathers a group of belly dancers and convinces them he was clairvoyant, but one of the dancers, Anitra, catches on to his act and robs him of his money and fine goods. Again, Hollandsworth was brilliant. One could almost see the cogs and gears spinning inside his head as he frothed on about his riches and prophetic visions.
The belly dancers’ costumes were vividly colored, and their garments floated about them like weightless feathers. Their gorgeous, fluid bodies drew the undivided attention of everyone in the house, including a wide-eyed Gynt.
The dancers were fantastic; the music selection, not so much. Someone decided that it would be OK to pair this sumptuous visual feast with Sting’s “Desert Rose.”
As the years advance, Gynt begins to look back on his largely wasted life. Sure, he made a fortune in shipping in Africa, but it was human cargo. He is eventually put in an insane asylum in Egypt, and Dan J. Gordon’s portrayal of Begriffenfeldt, the German asylum doctor, was a gem. On a voyage back home, the ship Gynt is on crashes, and rather than share his floating device with the cook, he lets him slip slowly into the icy depths.
All the while, Hollandsworth allowed us to feel the Gynt’s sorrows and losses, his solitude and regret. In the end, it was Solveig all along who would have made his life complete. Unfortunately, it takes Gynt a lifetime of selfishness to realize that. He dies in her arms, only to wander in limbo after death. Not that I like to admit it, but I shed a few tears when I saw that Solveig had waited her whole life for Gynt to return to her.
The large centerpiece of the stage was a stairway/hillside/boat hull/everything set built on casters and constantly rotated by the actors.
The ensemble actors were able to jump from traditional Norse dancing to the odious mountain trolls and from crazed apes to insane patients. At the risk of sounding insensitive, they were hysterical. They mocked perfectly the tossing about of a ship in a storm on an unmoving prop, and the grey eyeless faces of death were about as unnerving as anything I’ve seen in a while. I would certainly look forward to another production involving any of the people who worked on “Peer Gynt.” Bravo!
