I went to Sachsenheim Hall on Tuesday night to observe the rehearsal of my dear friend Peter’s play The Gyntish Self.
One rendition of the play was produced at Carnegie Mellon as Peter’s thesis play a few years back, and I had the opportunity to see it. While it has changed with re-writes and a newly emerging production, the play has lost none of its comedic bite.
Peter’s play is based on the Ibsen play Peer Gynt, which is based on the Norwegian fairy tale Per Gynt. Apparently at the time Ibsen wrote it there was a hullabaloo about the thing, with a bunch of pissed off Norwegians, and I’m sure they’d all be even more incensed by what Peter does with it. However, just like the Ibsen play, Peter’s creation moves seemlessly between the world of today and the deranged lunacy that is Peer Gynt’s mind. Of spontaneous interest to me was that Edvard Grieg wrote
In the Hall of the Mountain King for the play and when I was visiting Mike Geither last Friday night for his birthday his son was playing that very song on the piano.
Hickey (Dana Hart) ‘inspires’ his fellow saloon regulars.
Peter Roth and I got over to Ensemble last night to let The Iceman Cometh “wash” over us, as Eric Coble put it in a post. It did indeed. Four hours of washing makes for a very good scrubbing. The language does indeed wash over you and sweeps you up and spins you off and out to sea. I was reminded of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood with the powerful language and intense development of many, many characters. The play is truly a mammoth undertaking to see, let alone, I’m sure, to act in, or direct and stage. I can only ponder that effort. I remember going to Stratford one year and watching Night of the Iguana and thinking about how relentless and draining acting in that piece must be. Watching Iceman was confirmation again about the physical requirements of acting in a play that is long and filled with emotional power. Fortunately for Ensemble, the assembled a great cast with many of my favorite actors in Cleveland, including Michael Regnier (who was in my thesis play), Robert Hawkes, Bobby Williams, and Allen Branstein.
I won’t discuss O’Neill’s play that much, as there are other places online that discuss it and do a far better job than can I. All I can say is that I’m glad I got to see it. The folks at Ensemble did a great job.
