There are times when Irina Brook’s undeniably eye-catching take on Ibsen’s fantastical fairytale begins to look and sound like a close cousin of The Wizard of Oz. There are no Munchkins or ruby slippers, but there are trolls and Peer’s own wild imagination – and both pieces seem to share a cosy faith that the journey is only necessary if it brings you back to the place where you began, as well as the realisation that it is home and family and love that really matter. Redemption here comes in a flutter of snowflakes and the enduring love of a good, patient, passive woman, Solveig. Odysseus’s Penelope has got nothing on her.
Brook reworks the tale of the wastrel farmer’s son, Peer, who brags about riding flying reindeer and who casually seduces and abandons a bride on her wedding day, into a hackneyed meditation on the lust for fame. The narcissistic, self-deceiving fool becomes a lizard-hipped rock star called PG who sings “I’m the dude”, and tours with a band called the Trolls. It’s telling that the most cutting moment in the evening comes when a young wannabe rejects him in a bar, telling him that her parents used to have some of his albums.
With songs by Iggy Pop and poetry from Sam Shepard, the evening is self-consciously aware of its own sense of cool, but its redeeming feature is a no-holds-barred performance from Icelandic actor Ingvar Sigurdsson. As the misguided Peer, Sigurdsson is never afraid of being petulant, brattish and downright unlovely. But he also allows us to see the hole left by Peer’s missing soul; Sigurdsson makes absence visibly present.
In Ibsen’s original, Peer becomes a successful businessman of very dubious ethics, which would seem rather more relevant to our own age than the rock-star conceit imposed by Brook. Yes, the strutting rock star playing a role fits the idea that we are only truly human when we allow ourselves to be ourselves, but it’s a bit obvious, and instead of meeting the challenges of staging Ibsen’s wild fantasy fable, it makes a theatrical molehill out of a mountain.
What’s more, despite a stripped-back stage, the show doesn’t ever investigate the idea that the theatre itself is a place of the imagination, and that while Peer’s flights of fancy may get him into trouble, they are also part of what it means to be human. It’s a show that looks and sounds very good, but like the trolls themselves its allure is deceptive. It’s not quite Ibsen, but it’s never rock’n’roll either.
• Until 11 October. Box office: 020-7638 8891. Venue: Barbican, London
