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St John's Night

Jermyn Street Theatre, Inner London
From: Tuesday, 10th July 2012
To: Saturday, 4 August 2012

Our Review:

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Synopsis

Julian Poulsen and Johannes Birk, students from Christiania, accompany Jorgen Kvist on a visit to the farm of his aunt Mrs. Berg in Telemark. Johannes is secretly engaged to Mrs. Berg's daughter Juliane but finds himself drawn to her stepdaughter Anne, who is believed to be simpleminded. After a midsummer night's adventure at a fairy mound in the woods, the lovers change partners, the self-inflated nationalist Julian pairing off with the flighty, literal-minded Juliane, whereas the imaginative Johannes and Anne, in their engagement, affirm the superior reality of those who see poetry as truth.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 13 July 2012

Ibsen wrote a lot of interesting plays before he became Ibsen, and St John’s Night – not seen in London since its premiere in 1921 in a small theatre in Chelsea – is one of them; a spoof on nationalist drama inside another spoof on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Hats off, then, to Jermyn Street and director Anthony Biggs for cramming a Nordic landscape into this tiny space and still leaving room for goblins, a mountain fire, a marching song (with accordion, triangle and hand bells) and magical moonlight memories.

At the root is a question of inheritance, essential to Ibsen, and a discussion about communion with nature that climaxed in Peer Gynt before settling down in the background to the realist masterpieces.

So it’s fascinating to discover that this play’s central character, a spurious poet and Old Norse specialist, is a figure of fun, although Danny Lee Wynter’s too-quiet and finical performance a...

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