“Ibsen Exposes What We’re Afraid to Speak About” (Interview with the Creators of the Play)
Anna Timina, September 11, 2019
Last weekend, September 7–8, the Vakhtangov Theatre opened its pre-anniversary 99th season with Yuri Butusov’s production of Peer Gynt, based on Henrik Ibsen’s play. In this new work, Butusov tells a paradoxical and mystical story, exploring with Ibsen what it truly means “to be oneself.”
“I have loved this play for a long time, and I feel incredibly close to its author. He exposes human abscesses, pain points. But he doesn’t give answers. The most important thing, I think, is that it is a story about mercy and love,” the director told journalists after a rehearsal before the premiere.
The title role is performed as a duo by Sergey Volkov and Pavel Popov, which, according to Butusov, symbolically reflects the multifaceted nature of the central character.
“If you divide him very conditionally, one version of the hero is light, the other dark,” explains Pavel Popov. “Although we all understand that in real life this doesn’t happen: every person has many different traits. So this division is conditional. But in any case, these shifts from one state to another, the emotional fluctuations, open up enormous opportunities for the actor.”
“The characters transition into one another, forming a single narrative line,” adds Sergey Volkov. “I think the conflict of Peer Gynt is that he lives with a sense of permissiveness that clashes with the high and beautiful ideals he wants to reach. He strives to make those close to him happy, but nothing works out.”
The character of Åse, Peer Gynt’s mother, played by Evgenia Kregzhde, is in constant conflict with her son.
“I believe the roots of such complex relationships lie in the extraordinary nature of the characters. These are people of poetry—two creative, whole, idealistic, and uncompromising individuals—not suited for ordinary life. They love and hate each other. In the scene of the mother’s death, they cannot allow themselves to part warmly and tenderly, as ‘ordinary people’ would. That is why the scene ends with a burning—it is necessary for Peer Gynt to say farewell. I don’t think the mother feels contempt for her son; rather, it is pain and disappointment, because the most precious thing, your flesh and blood, does not meet your expectations. Peer Gynt compromises himself, strays from his original principles, he is unclean. The mother sees his future path like no one else, sees what he will become. Here one can draw a parallel with Hitler’s mother: would she have left her son alive if she had known the path he would take?”
In developing the play, I worked from Peer Gynt’s character. With such a restless son, it would have been strange to play a simple, ordinary woman. The whole process was very intuitive: lots of improvisation, tactile interaction with the material.
The character of Solveig, the woman awaiting the return of her eternally searching beloved, is strong and yet lyrical.
“I don’t think my character is unhappy—she is happy precisely because she has encountered love,” says actress Yana Sobolevskaya. “Of course, it is a mad love, an absolute love. Destructive, consuming, and eternal. Such a love is always tested.”
Anitra is played by actress Adelina Gizatullina, familiar to many viewers for her leading roles on the Simonov Stage (Frida: Life in Color, Nijinsky: The Brilliant Idiot).
“My character is the antagonist. Anitra has a consumerist approach to Peer Gynt, which contrasts sharply with Solveig’s pure and beautiful love,” says the actress.
Together with designer Maxim Obrezkov, Yuri Butusov creates a complex stage world full of visual metaphors, finding solutions for a text with numerous characters and locations. This is especially evident in the third act, when Peer Gynt leaves his native Norway. Music plays a key role here.
“Partly, the music is the solution to the play; through it, the characters express their most painful emotions,” says actor Yuri Tsokurov, whose character is literally called Musician. “Music helps elevate the story, giving it a poetic resonance.”
“I am drawn to Ibsen’s hero, even though his actions can be terrible,” concluded Yuri Butusov. “Ibsen is great because he exposes what we are afraid of, what we do not want to speak about. But no matter what a person is like, mercy and love will save them.”