Peregrinating with ‘Peer Gynt’

Down on a wooded hillside on a hot day in summer, a strapping lad of 20 is striding briskly, pissed off by his skinny widowed mother who is following close at his heels, haranguing him for being such a lazy bone. The young man tries to silence the old woman with a tall tale about a buck he had shot in the forest but the animal was only grazed by his bullet and it had turned around and charged him with its antlers. The widow is momentarily stunned by the account but when she returns to her senses and realizes that the boy is playing his old tricks and lying again, she continues to assault him with her tongue all the way to their farm. Once they get there, the lad deposits her on the rooftop of the farm house and runs off to the village.

This is the opening scene of Henrik Ibsen’s picaresque fantasy, Peer Gynt, now being staged weekends by Dramatis Personae at the Pius XII Theater on United Nations Ave., Manila.

It was originally intended by the Norwegian playwright to be a closet drama — a play meant to be read from a book rather than to be seen on the stage. Eventually, he revised it for the theater. Edvard Grieg composed incidental music for it and, in time, it was acknowledged by the civilized world as a masterpiece by a young dramatist from the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Ibsen’s first major work was Brand, a drama in verse about a soul-sick evangelist who carries his idealism to the extreme that it becomes fanaticism, causing his family much suffering. Peer Gynt, also written in verse, is about a wastrel who squanders his time in petty pursuits, such as chasing after pretty skirts and running off the moment he faces an attachment that demands responsibility.

The DP production casts Dingdong Rosales in the title role which requires the young actor to age within a span of three hours and a half from 20 to 70.

After Peer abandons his mother Ase (Ilma Barayuga) on the roof of their cottage, he runs off to the village where he mixes idly with the guests at a wedding party. He meets Solveig (Joann Boyles), who has come to the reception with her mother (Karen Liquete) and father (Danny Magisa). He finds the maiden attractive, but before long he is espied by the bridegroom and the guests pumping the bride Ingrid (Liquete) from behind. He leads the poor woman to the mountains and leaves her there. He cavorts with three females but leaves them when he is pursued by the irate groom and the villagers. He flees deeper into the mountains, encounters a Troll Princess and impregnates her. He is enticed by her father, the Troll King, to join the troll colony by sacrificing his eyesight, which Peer refuses to do even after the Troll Princess has borne him a troll child. (The troll is the Scandinavian dwende).

Next, Peer encounters the great Boyg, a supernatural personification of public inertia, who tries to teach the young man what he has always known — "going roundabout" to get out of a mess. Peer manages to escape from the power of the Boyg because "there are women behind him" — an idea that anticipates Ibsen’s faith in feminism in his later plays — the liberation of mankind by the power of the female sex. Solveig follows Peer, but he leaves her in a hut where they have been staying together. He comes home to find his mother dying and comforts her in her last moments with his incorrigible fantasies.

The foregoing sums up the first three acts of the play.

When we meet Peer again at the beginning of Act IV, he is a middle-aged wealthy ex-slave trader who had made his fortune in America and is now enjoying his ill-gotten fortune as he sails on his yacht on the coast of Morocco. His adventures — or misadventures — follow in quick succession — Egypt, mummies, the Sphinx, the Statue of Memnon, Arabia, the deception of the Bedouin dancing girl Anitra (Joann Boyles) who robs him of his jewels, his dream of being the Emperor of the world, the insane asylum, the voyage home, the storm, the shipwreck.

In the final act, Peer returns to his village. As poor as when he first went to sea, he comes home in dejection to find the faithful Solveig still waiting for him. He meets the Button Moulder, the personification of death, (Lito Casaje) who tells him that he is to be melted into a button, "melted in the fire again, deserving neither of hell or heaven." Ultimately, it is Solveig’s undying love that saves Peer from the Button Moulder’s cauldron and promises him redemption.

This summary of the plot proves clearly enough that the play is not easy to mount. Director Casaje uses the translation to English by Kenneth McLeish, which employs familiar, every-day idioms and avoids arty-farty poetic expression. Certain references to Philippine life are interpolated into the production, like the mention of Mt. Banahaw to imply the universality and timelessness of the material. Although Casaje and Rod Quinto make use mainly of incidental music from Grieg — "Ase’s Death," "In the Hall of the Mountain King," "Anitra’s Dance," and "Solveig’s Song," there are also brief phrases from rock ’n roll and Britney Spears — the effect is anachronistic, to be sure but this is intended.

Working on a shoe-string budget, Casaje needs to rely on meager resources to stage a play which is monumental in its conception. He finds the solution to the problem in the application of minimalism, which is so much in vogue these days anyhow. Hence, props and sets are minimal — so much the better for the actors who do not have to run the risk of bumping into them in the dark. Lights designer Luther Gumia, costume designer Lito Perez and the make-up artists of Avon will do the rest — not an easy task when they need to conjure trolls, gnomes, goblins and other mythical beings to make theater magic.

Young as he is, Rosales works wonders with his role as Peer Gynt, who ages 50 years in the course of the drama. Boyles tackles antithetical characters — the sweet, gentle Solveig and the deceitful Bedouin dancer, Anitra plus minor roles as herd girl and mourner. Magisa has the toughest assignments: he plays the Troll King, Solveig’s father, The Fat Man, Aslak, Trumpetblast, the Boyg, the captain of the yacht, a priest and the Sphinx / Begriffenfeldt.

The rest of the cast — Liquete, Abigail Aquino, John Richard Ang, Joey de Guzman, Ramil Rivera, Felix Fallaria and Casaje himself deserve credit for their respective multiple roles.

The play is being presented with the cooperation of the Royal Norwegian Embassy.

The students of World Drama has much to study and learn in Peer Gynt. It is a theatrical smorgasbord of diverse elements, allusions and influences to feed the hunger of the questing mind: a parody or mock-heroic epic of near-Homeric dimensions of an anti-hero with a faithful Penelope (Solveig) waiting for her husband to come home from his odyssey; a Til Eulenspiegel playing merry pranks; a meandering picaresque character who puts one over his superiors; an allegory like the medieval Morality Play such as Everyman; the belief in alchemy and the philosopher’s stone which can turn base metal into gold; the Arthurian legend about the quest for the Holy Grail; John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the journey to the Celestial City; a plea for feminism, the liberation of women; a political dig at Norwegian individualism of Ibsen’s time; a cry for the emancipation of the working class; a protest against terrorism; and Indian mysticism in the belief in karmic retribution.

Casaje’s Peer Gynt offers the student much more than what he can swallow and threatens the poor boy with mental indigestion.

* * *

For comments, write to jessqcruz@hot mail.com..