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The Review - THEATRE by SIMON WROE
Published: 31 January 2008

A scene from Peer Gynt at The Royal Academy

A Pleasance look at the serious side of sinning

PREVIEW - PEER GYNT
Pleasance Theatre

THE world of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt is a place of loose morals, gleeful misadventure and heartbreak.
Where better to set Terje Tveit’s unconventional new production of the 19th-century classic then, than in the prohibition era of the early 1930s?
Peer, an unscrupulous libertine who believes that “to sin, you have to be serious about it,” wanders seedy jazz clubs and gangster haunts in search of his true identity in the Ibsen Stage Company’s latest offering, opening at the Pleasance Theatre this week.
Since the company’s birth in a small Norwegian town in 2001, they have staged an austere total of 10 productions on the London stage – rarely performing more than two shows a year, yet each to great acclaim.
An earlier version of Peer Gynt featured at The Royal Academy of Arts during their Edvard Munch by Himself exhibition.
Originally created by the author to be read aloud, it proved so popular that it was soon adapted for theatrical performance. Ibsen cleverly intertwines his satirical views on the human condition with references to traditional Norwegian fairy tales while Tveit, the ballast of the Ibsen Stage Company, heightens the theme of the timelessness further by removing the play from its 19th-century settings.
It’s a heady mix of proverb, original sin and gangsters by the small company. Judging by prior achievements it ought to be a prohibition cocktail with a kick.
• Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, translated and adapted by Terje Tveit, runs until February 17 at the Pleasance Theatre, Islington. Tickets £10 (£8 conc)

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