By turns lyrical, nightmarish, comical, poignant, and thought provoking, Peer Gynt holds a distorting mirror up to nature. Some of the themes that emerge from the story are:

• A life’s journey in pursuit of, in turn: childhood dreams; fame, fortune and the woman; identity, meaning and purpose

• A morality tale of excessive self-focus

• A story of a strong and double-binding mother–son relationship, with an absent father, and its effects on an only child, especially as regards his interaction with women

• A study of an over-imaginative young man, providing a model for later fantasists such as Billy Liar and Walter Mitty

The play is primarily a fantasy woven out of Norwegian folklore, albeit blended with social satire, and it features a variety of mythological characters. Trolls provide tropes of the beast within, motivated solely by primitive, selfish desires un-moderated by empathy or a moral code. The Boyg, a giant, invisible troll, intangible yet impassable, encourages Peer to adopt an ultimately toxic nostrum of self-sufficiency and refusal to confront deep-rooted problems.

The character of Aase, Peer’s mother, and their life together on a farm is derived directly, albeit with exaggeration, from Ibsen’s experience following the failure of his father’s business. Likewise, the profligacy of “rich John Gynt” is a reflection of the reckless hospitality of Ibsen’s father.

The action of the play moves from Norway to north Africa and back again. Ibsen wrote the script while living in Italy, and it was published in 1867. He described it as a “dramatic poem”. Like its predecessor, Brand, it was written in rhyming verse, and was not originally intended for the stage. Ibsen was eventually persuaded to stage a production of an abridged version, with incidental music by Edvard Grieg, in 1876 in Christiania (now Oslo). The play has since received countless productions worldwide. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite is among the most popular musical works ever written.