16 July 2019. Peter Gynt at the National Theatre.

This production of David Hare's adaptation of Ibsen's work had received very mixed reviews. It's distinctly long at almost three hours, excluding the intervals and so needs to maintain one's attention. Many critics, such as the FT's Sarah Hemming saw it as a long slog; others, such as Michael Billington gave it four stars. What everyone agreed upon was that James McArdle's near constant presence on-stage as Peter was an outstanding feat of acting.
The first act was about 80 minutes and I found it pretty tedious. I was very much on the cusp of giving up as all we seemed to be doing was sitting through Peter giving his wildly fanciful accounts to his mother of what he had been up to. She quickly twigged that all he was doing was recounting the plot of war films she knew perfectly well. All this seemed based on the idea of the importance nowadays of having a story, no matter whether true of fake. But this brought up the first fundamental problem for me. Was this a translation, update or complete rewrite of Ibsen. By the end I was not entirely clear but the answer seemed to be a rewrite using an Ibsen framework. 
Quite a few people did not return for the second and third acts - each rather shorter than the first. This seemed a pity as, for me but not for the critics, things picked up. The second act was quite fast-mving as Peter on a voyage of discovery was found in various locations such as a Trumpian golf course in Scotland. Then, in the third act, we had Peter in his old age taking stock of things and giving us his wisdom. This seemed quite good but I'm not sure we needed to have the preceeding two plus hours to get round to it. And, less than a week later, I find it hard to recall what the pearls of wisdom were. The main one, I think was that what we needed to do was self-improve.
So, this was certainly not an unmissable evening. Equally, having bought a ticket, I think it was worth attending if only for McArdle's acting, the brilliant set and the overall transportation into another world for the evening. That said, I definitely wouldn't want to see it again.