Peer Gynt

Who better than Robert Bly to revive this cautionary tale of misdirected masculinity? Peer Gynt is the most deplorable of characters, a swashbuckler who, during the course of a single play, manages to desert his mother, cajole a bride into the mountains on her wedding night, get crunk with some hillbillies, and go on a globe-trotting black-market bender. Contemporary audiences will notice that nineteenth-century playwright Henrik Ibsen makes an apt statement about a familiar, modern archetype: the fatherless adolescent whose thuggish ambitions eclipse all kindness within. What’s more, Ibsen wrote the entire thing in Norwegian verse; as with most English translations, Bly’s new adaptation duplicates that effort.

Guthrie Theater, 612-377-2224.