Peter Gynt

by David Hare after Henrik Ibsen

seen at National Theatre (Olivier) on 16 August 2019

Jonathan Kent directs James McArdle in the title role of David Hare's adaptation of Ibsen's dramatic poem Peer Gynt, the story of a man consumed by the need to be and feel authentic, heedless of the effect this has on those around him. Pruned of the elevated poetry, and relocated from Norway to Scotland, the play proves to be compelling, touching and often very comic, though it certainly takes a darker turn as the evening progresses, as the irrepressible young Peter grows older and more disillusioned with life.

On the exposed Olivier stage almost every scene is set outdoors (designed by Richard Hudson), whether just outside his mother's hut, down at the village where a wedding is supposed to be taking place, even in the kingdom of the mountain trolls, and then on a golf course in Florida, or in the African desert after a plane crash, or at sea in a fateful storm. The restlessness of Peter's life is thus emphasised by the lack of domesticity: when he first visits his mother all the talk is outside the dwelling and he finishes up leaving her on the roof of her hut so that she cannot interfere with his plans, and even at her death she seems to be as much in the fields as on her deathbed.

Though there is a large supporting cast of two dozen, everything depends on Peter, and James McArdle gives a brilliant and commanding performance. As a young man he is fizzing with nervous energy, ready to talk the hind leg off a donkey, interrupting others, interrupting himself with asides or new directions in storytelling - the crux of his problem, as others see it, is his gloriously unabashed way of embellishing his accounts of his deeds, utterly unfazed by the fact that those listening easily recognise the tales as movie plots. In McArdle's performance, the self-centredness has a beguiling charm - easy to laugh at, I suppose, from the safety of the audience, though the constant bombast would be exhausting to live with. Only with the inescapable fact of his mother's death does the carapace of self-absorption crack to reveal a man reduced to tears.

In mid life, Peter is not so excitable, though he is still completely self-centred. There is an unpleasantness in the business tycoon mixing with other shark-like capitalists, but one can see how the engaging self-presentation of youth has begun to curdle into a more callous self-satisfaction once Peter has become wealthy. By the time he is an old man, he is cantankerous and easily affronted by the contentment oof even the most humble people around him - first he proposes a generous tip to the crew of the ship on which he is the only passenger, but he withdraws the offer when the captain remarks that they all have homes to go to, and in the shipwreck he drowns the ship's cook rather than run the risk of drowning himself. Yet the fateful encounter with The Button Moulder, a stern figure from Ibsen's own nightmares played with steely implacability by Oliver Ford Davies, shows us a man still trying to find his way in the world, still baffled by questions of right and wrong, goodness and sinfulness, still driven by the desire not to be trivially neither one thing nor the other.

It's the best attempt at staging this impossible play that I have seen.