Drama Daughter and I saw a performance of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt a couple of months ago when I took her to St. Edward’s University in Austin for a scholarship audition and drama workshop. The performance was very long–about three hours, probably twenty plus scenes. The translation was by poet Robert Bly, the guy who wrote Iron John. I remember seeing Bly many years ago on a PBS special talking about male-ness and beating drums and going out into the woods to find one’s masculinity—that sort of thing. The entire play is in verse, by the way.

Bly’s translation of Peer Gynt does have some of that ” what does it take to become a Real Man” aura and theme. I don’t how much of that was pure Ibsen and how much was Bly’s interpretation of Ibsen. I’m now trying to imagine Charltonn Heston as Peer Gynt. The actor we saw in the play was quite athletic –and exhausted by end of the three hours. Has anyone seen the movie version?

However, one of the main things I noticed about the theatrical production was how Catholic it was. St. Edward’s is a Catholic university, but I doubt the play was chosen specifically for its catholicity. Still, particularly at the end, the play goes from a confusing amalgamation of folk tale and coming of age story into a Catholic version of the prodigal son story. Peer Gynt, who has been out in the world, gaining and losing riches, chasing women, striving for power and fame, comes home, full of sin and full of himself and yet not really knowing who he is. There is one scene in which he peels an onion and as he does so he names the layers of himself, but as he peels off layer after layer, he never comes to the center or core of his own identity.

Peer Gynt does come home, over land and sea, but not to his Father (who is missing in action–father issues), rather to his sweetheart and to his Mother who is standing behind the virginal lady that he left long before and who has been waiting for most of Peer Gynt’s life to welcome him home. The sweetheart sings him a lullaby, and he says something like, “You are my wife and my mother!” And she says that she is the mother who will bring him to the Father. Sort of Oedipal.

I thought it was fascinating to watch. I wouldn’t have expected Ibsen to use such seemingly Catholic imagery. Wouldn’t a Norwegian be more likely to be steeped in Lutheranism? Or do Lutherans have a Marian theology of their own?