COMPLEMENTARY PUPPETRY A key element in PSC's Peer Gynt. |
A troll, according to folklore, can conceive by lust alone. That's one presumptuous genesis, and one that Peer Gynt (Noah Brody) learns the hard way. But similar liberties are involved in his own formation: Peer creates — and re-creates — himself by the sheer force of his own ad hoc passions, urges, and whims. But what exactly does that "self" add up to? As rogue Peer bounds the globe, defining himself now by love, now by money, now by knowledge, playwright Henrik Ibsen asks us to ponder the nature of the self, in his romp of Norwegian folklore, Peer Gynt. Portland Stage Company presents the comedy in a spellbinding collaboration with the renowned Figures of Speech Puppet Theatre, under the direction of Anita Stewart."The Gyntian self is the army of appetites, desires, all that swells within my breast," exudes Peer (Noah Brody). Likewise is the span of his realm, as visualized by PSC's designers, epically sensual and near hyperbolic in its colors and contrasts. As we vault along with him through myriad worlds, set design (by Stewart), lighting (Bryon Winn) and sound (Jill BC Du Boff) employ simple materials and designs to astoundingly rich effect: Dappled spotlights and slim cut-outs of birches serve as the mountain forest where Peer adjourns with somebody else's bride, nearly weds a troll princess, and promises himself to a girl in yellow. The desert coast of Morocco, where Peer has grown rich from trade, is evoked with a sheer yolk-yellow sheet spread over the stage, smoldering against a deep blue backdrop. When Peer gets stuck on a ship during a storm, wild sea and weather are conjured by as little as rain sounds, a rippling gray drop, and the occasional white flash from behind it.
As he travels through all this, Peer rollicks and schemes with a huge slew of characters; with the exception of Brody, cast members each play many, many roles. These performers are playful, nimble, lusciously garbed (Loyce Arthur's costume design), and, I'm thrilled to report, overwhelmingly local. Mark Honan snorts up a storm as the big-bearded Troll King; Dustin Tucker decries the tyranny of speech as an inmate in a madhouse, and later gets up in white fur as a freaky ship passenger; and J.P. Guimont comes after Peer with a watering can on his head, reams of sackcloth over his frame, and a huge ladle in his hand. Those three guys alone are worth the price of admission, and the show also glows with Sally Wood's Soleveig (Peer's impossibly patient true love), who radiates in an indelible yellow frock; and darkens with Moira Driscoll's insouciant and diabolical "Lean One." Visiting artist Victoria Soyer glistens in greens as the wanton troll princess so susceptible to Peer's dirty thoughts.
The cast also gets its hands on Figures of Speech's fine puppets, which are alternately transcendent and silly. Brody's puppet counterpart is a realistic, fully-figured Peer with arms and legs, half life-size and made in a Japanese style called Bunraku. Bawdier is the series of buxom "bib" puppets: Each is essentially a mini, floppy body worn on the torso, which uses the actor's face as an oversized head. Finally, and most dramatically, we have the big head puppets: Three massive white papier-mâchû heads, worn by actors strapped in far below them. Each big-head character is aided by one giant, gesturing hand or finger, worn on the actor's hand (these later make eerie cameos in the madhouse, carried by white-sheathed lunatics).
