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A Peer Gynt suite

June 3, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review John Doyle’s Classic Stage Company revival of Peer Gynt. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

American stagings of “Peer Gynt” are scarce to the point of singularity. Mark Lamos directed it at Hartford Stage in 1989, but I’m not aware of any subsequent full-length regional productions, and “Peer Gynt” hasn’t been seen on Broadway in any form since 1960. John Doyle’s new Classic Stage Company revival would thus be of signal importance regardless of its quality—and in spite of the inescapable fact that Mr. Doyle, unlike Mr. Lamos, has given us not the real right thing but an intermission-free two-hour “adaptation” of Henrik Ibsen’s five-hour masterpiece, performed in modern dress on a bare platform by a cast of seven. Fortunately, his version is directed and acted with considerable imagination, but there’s no denying that it amounts to a “Peer Gynt” suite, a production that whets the appetite rather than sating it….

CjUDvPqVEAAfZ8x“Peer Gynt” would doubtless be far better known in this country if it were even somewhat more manageable in size and scale. Alas, it is all but impossible to produce in anything remotely resembling its original form save in a festival setting. Hence Mr. Doyle’s scaled-down, unsparingly cut production, performed in the round in his own prose adaptation of the original Dano-Norwegian text….

Nevertheless, a two-hour “Peer Gynt” is better than no “Peer Gynt” at all, and when a gifted director like Mr. Doyle turns his hand to such a venture, one cannot but profit from seeing how he goes about it. His English-language adaptation, for instance, contains any number of felicitous touches….

Mr. Doyle’s staging, by contrast, struck me as almost penitentially drab, denuded of much of the play’s humor and stripped of Edvard Grieg’s justly popular incidental music (which in this country is far better known than the play itself). Mr. Ebert is plausible enough as Peer Gynt, lively and blustery, but I didn’t find him compelling…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

John Doyle talks about his staging of Peer Gynt:

Replay: a backstage look at old-time radio sound effects

June 3, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERA“Back of the Mike,” a promotional film about sound effects on radio produced by the Jam Handy Organization for Chevrolet in 1938:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Robertson Davies on the ubiquity of stupidity

June 3, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“If you attack stupidity, you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life, and you will make small progress against it.”

Robertson Davies, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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