If you haven’t marked your calendar for 2028, the bicentennial of Henrik Ibsen’s birth, please do. Ever generous, the Norwegian Ibsen Company has come to London to help us ramp up towards celebrating 200 years of arguably the most significant modern playwright ever.
No better ambassador could arrive than the charismatic and gorgeous Kåre Conradi, who both explains the literary, cultural, and human significance of the character Peer Gynt and enacts this seemingly fatally-flawed yet perhaps redeemable everyman for us through mesmerising scenes in both English and Norwegian.
Peer Gynt is Ibsen’s second major play. Unlike many of his later, more naturalistic works, this five-act 1867 epic is written in verse in the original Dano-Norwegian. Conradi explains he likes Peter Watts’ translation (from 1966) that illuminates much of Iben’s poetic language but also telegraphs its meaning. I agree. It is sheer bliss to enjoy full-fledged scenes from Ibsen’s seminal drama without feeling you’re being rushed or put in a blender, but also to move along at a pace, guided by this most expert of actors.
Conradi, who has just turned 54 (a perfect central age to play Peer Gynt, seeing as the story spans the entirety of his life), explains that this work came about some 35 or so years ago when he was tasked with delivering a lecture to students on the meaning of play. In order to enliven it, he prepared excerpts for performance as well as spoke about its significance and themes. Since then, he has taken the show intermittently to various venues around the world, including Mumbai and London. Brimming with energy, athleticism and humour, Conradi leads us through the saga as both Peer Gynt and, in a kind of Verfremdungseffekt, as a Norwegian artist contemplating the wider social role of the ‘liar’ who is central to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. The titular character is a man who travels the world trafficking in slaves, seducing and abandoning women, impersonating a troll and snatching a life-raft from a drowning man (arguing, in response to the ship’s chef who cries for help and pleads that his children need him, that it is Peer who deserves to live because he has no children yet and needs more time to have them) but is still not quite sinful enough for Hell, much to his own chagrin.
What this production manages to do is create a totally mesmerising theatrical experience without any of the stagecraft often associated with Ibsen’s proto-existentialist masterpiece. At the same time, it moves at a pleasing clip – more substantial than an amuse-bouche but not requiring the stamina of the five-act version. I feel delightfully teased – indeed keenly hungry – to consume a full epic version when it is (hopefully) produced somewhere as part of bicentennial celebrations. Edifying and electric, Conradi’s piece is moving, thought-provoking and entertaining. I would hurry to see it when you can.
Review by Mary Beer
Norwegian star Kåre Conradi’s critically acclaimed one-man dramatised lecture about one of Ibsen’s most famous and colourful characters, Peer Gynt.
Since discovering the play at 17, Conradi has had a passionate connection with Peer Gynt. In just over an hour, he moves effortlessly between storyteller and the feckless Peer himself to shed new light on Ibsen’s legendary play.
19–21 Feb 2026
The Norwegian Ibsen Company
By Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Elisabeth Gording and Kåre Conradi
https://www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/
