Peer Gynt

About

From 22 February, resident director Simon Solberg reframes the question “Who are you?” and has his hero Peer Gynt ask “How did you become who you are?” Peer and his mother live on society’s margins after the father squandered the family’s wealth. Terrified of mediocrity, Peer invents lies and grandiose fantasies, drifting through the world, acquiring dubious riches only to lose them, and seeking meaning in both spirituality and science. Appearance and reality blur as he becomes lost in relationships and insignificance; the voices around him drown out his own desires. In a psychiatric clinic he is to be crowned “mad-house emperor,” then flees across the sea and narrowly escapes death. Returning as an old man to a shattered homeland, emptiness grips him as he asks what truly lies at his core. Like an onion with only layers, nothing seems to remain—until, just before death, he finally discovers within himself what he has always longed for.