Word: peers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hold of a cargo ship, white fumes belch forth as from an anteroom to hell. The trolls are quite droll. They are dressed in inky black frock coats and robes, their heads are chalk-white and they sport Miss Piggy snouts. The Troll King (Frederick Neumann) immediately recognizes Peer as a closet troll and lays down the primal law of trolldom, which is the leitmotiv of the entire play. As rendered in Rolf Fjelde's lyrical English versification, it goes...
...modern parlance, "Look out for No. 1." Which, except for an affecting reunion with his dying mother (Gloria Foster), is exactly how Peer conducts his life...
Presciently modern, Ibsen foresaw that collectivized man would make egocentric quests for identity and searches for self. Peer's quest for self-definition becomes a tale of tepid damnation. The suave, cynical Peer of Part II (played with acute perceptivity by Gerry Bamman) defines himself by what he does and not by what he is. And what he does is always tainted by easy accommodation and the habit of incessant compromise. He moves from trading slaves out of Charleston, S.C., and shipping pagan idols to China to reigning as a prophet in the Moroccan desert, finally ending up crowned...
Back in Norway, old and ailing, Peer meets a mysterious stranger in a black business suit. This is the Button Molder (Walter Atamaniuk), who tells him he is to be melted down as "damaged goods" and recast with "the mass of humanity." Essentially, the Button Molder likens Peer to those whom Dante consigned to Limbo: "That caitiff choir of the angels, who were not rebellious, nor were faithful to God; but were for themselves." Peer flees to the mountain hut where Solveig, ever faithful and now blind, cradles him in her arms. But neither Ciulei's direction nor Fiorenzo...
...always wins out. Shared or not, that fundamentalist faith gives Jerry Lee's music, even to a heathen, the unique power of sin. No smart talk or sidestepping for him. This is the devil's music, and Jerry Lee Lewis plays it with the aplomb of a peer. He may smell damnation himself, but that unholy gift of his has surely secured him a place in rock-'n'-roll heaven. Right up there in the dark. At the end of the road...