Simon offers a mixed review of a 1989 production staged by the Hartford Stage Company and starring Richard Thomas (John Boy from television's The Waltonsj in the title role.

Peer Gynt is one of those very rare plays that see humanity whole. All of man is in it, and most of woman. To look at it is to gaze into an abyss: the abyss of the human soul. Ibsen's hero is artist and wheeler-dealer, dreamer and scrapper, visionary and fool. This eternal adolescent yearns for the heights; this coward needs no banana peel for his pratfalls. Around him are Aase, the overprotective, carping, impossible mother; Ingrid, the Woman in Green, Anitra, three versions of unidealized woman; and Solveig, the ideal beloved-cum-mother figure.

Around Peer, too, are the world and its people; also history, politics, religion, and pusillanimity. It is, like Lear and Faust and a couple of others...