Word: ibsenism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...there are too many disturbances due to oversized props or sudden sound effects, it is only because Ibsen's stage directions (for example: "A jet of fire shoots into the air from the yacht, followed by thick clouds of smoke: a hollow report is heard... Gradually the smoke clears away: the ship has disappeared.") demand technical wizardry far beyond the capabilities of the Loeb. Peer Gynt's production staff should have accepted this, instead of burdening the stage with contraptions planned to meet the author's specifications that only sap the play of its dramatic strength...
...Ibsen also wrote Peer Gynt to lampoon Norwegian egoism, self-sufficiency (presented as the trolls' motto) and political character, and you can see why almost anyone would be content to glean what meaning he could from the play. But Director Peter Frisch, who seems to want to drive home every nuance, cut the script sufficiently, and Peer Gynt, which runs over three-and-a-half hours, emerges much longer than the dramatic interest warrants...
...ability, Peer, based on a folk hero, is an yarn-spinner and boaster, and Larsen is an excellent story-teller. From the opening scene, with Peer's fib of riding astride a reindeer-buck. Larsen reveals astounding acrobatic ability, vocal control, and stage presence, lending greater weight to Ibsen's lyrical verse. His versatility becomes apparent as his mood and expression age with Peer, who bears the scars of a weather-beaten, lonely old wanderer...
...trivializes every major scene in the play. When she feeds the manuscript of Eilert's book to the flames, Ibsen has her say, "I am burning your baby." Jackson gives the line the emotional urgency of someone tossing away old telephone bills into the wastebasket. When she takes her own life with her father's pistol, it should be a stark and moving epiphany. Jackson makes it seem like a one-minute ad campaign for stricter gun control...
...Ibsen never wrote a richer or more penetrating play. Rarely, if ever, has that play been so impoverished in a stage presentation...