Dundee Rep
5 stars
There are few better theatre directors in this country who know how to open out a big space than Dundee Rep’s outgoing artistic head, Dominic Hill. His mighty production of Ibsen’s once presumed unstageable rites of passage epic gives its scope full vent, even incorporating microphones in a knowing nod to the play’s radio-friendliness. Updated in Colin Teevan’s new version, written in a scabrous, James Kelman style demotic, here is a vital and class-conscious telling.
In the first half, set against a giant Woolworth’s style watercolour, Peer and his mother are pure soap opera trailer trash, with Peer doing a runner with the bride down at the local line-dance even after he stumbles upon Solveig, his speccy, swotty and utterly pure soul-mate. The Trolls, meanwhile, are a feral sink-estate kingdom who live by their own rules.
Once Keith Fleming’s testosterone-charged Peer scarpers from assorted commitments at the end of the first half, the second sees him return as a grizzled Gerry Mulgrew playing what appears to be an exiled self-made man, all safari suits, photo-ops and in-depth interviews. The truth, which takes in self-deification, a collaboration between lunatics taking over asylums and The Pet Shop Boys and men in gorilla suits is far more humbling.
In terms of sheer theatrical bravura, Hill’s Dundee swan-song, in association with the National Theatre Of Scotland, is an astonishing rollercoaster of maverick invention involving some 20 actors onstage, including a band who veer from wedding band cow-punk to elegiac piano in Paddy Cunneen’s score. Yet, as Peer is watched over throughout by Cliff Burnett’s Randall and Hopkirk suited figure, it becomes a painful and poetic treatise on loss, of self and others. A brilliant reinvention that’s both irreverent and profound.
The Herald, October 1st 2007
ends
5 stars
There are few better theatre directors in this country who know how to open out a big space than Dundee Rep’s outgoing artistic head, Dominic Hill. His mighty production of Ibsen’s once presumed unstageable rites of passage epic gives its scope full vent, even incorporating microphones in a knowing nod to the play’s radio-friendliness. Updated in Colin Teevan’s new version, written in a scabrous, James Kelman style demotic, here is a vital and class-conscious telling.
In the first half, set against a giant Woolworth’s style watercolour, Peer and his mother are pure soap opera trailer trash, with Peer doing a runner with the bride down at the local line-dance even after he stumbles upon Solveig, his speccy, swotty and utterly pure soul-mate. The Trolls, meanwhile, are a feral sink-estate kingdom who live by their own rules.
Once Keith Fleming’s testosterone-charged Peer scarpers from assorted commitments at the end of the first half, the second sees him return as a grizzled Gerry Mulgrew playing what appears to be an exiled self-made man, all safari suits, photo-ops and in-depth interviews. The truth, which takes in self-deification, a collaboration between lunatics taking over asylums and The Pet Shop Boys and men in gorilla suits is far more humbling.
In terms of sheer theatrical bravura, Hill’s Dundee swan-song, in association with the National Theatre Of Scotland, is an astonishing rollercoaster of maverick invention involving some 20 actors onstage, including a band who veer from wedding band cow-punk to elegiac piano in Paddy Cunneen’s score. Yet, as Peer is watched over throughout by Cliff Burnett’s Randall and Hopkirk suited figure, it becomes a painful and poetic treatise on loss, of self and others. A brilliant reinvention that’s both irreverent and profound.
The Herald, October 1st 2007
ends
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