While a tuxedoed audience was surging to its feet the other night, applauding the opening of “Peer Gynt” at BAM, the director-designer Robert Wilson took the stage. He’s still rangy and elegant, and his close-cropped hair has gone a very attractive shade of silver. This is when I started to notice the overwhelming similarities between Robert Wilson and Andy Warhol.

Mr. Wilson, just like Warhol, has become an industry – his Watermill Center is more literally an art factory than the Factory ever was. He’s also pulled off the same impressive transition from rock ‘n’ roll outsider to insider darling, with the world’s tastemakers all vying to kneel at his feet. And the pall of commercialism that veils their enterprises bothers critics of both.

Those tired of the Warhol style accused him of taking an image and pouring the “Warhol gravy” over it, stamping it with that highly recognizable series of bright colors. Mr. Wilson has his own brand of gravy – gorgeous, almost spiritual light designs; goofy sound-effects laid over painstaking movement; and isolated figures positioned near giant, cut-out shapes. Last summer’s “I Galigo,” produced at the Lincoln Center Festival, was a programmatic application of the “Wilson look” to Indonesian epic; now at BAM, we can see it on Ibsen.

This isn’t to say that “Peer Gynt” doesn’t afford a spectrum of pleasures. The Wilson world, with its incredible backdrops of saturated color (he has a way of lighting a scrim that makes it seem like silk), and casts of terrifying expressionist clowns, are nice places to spend an evening. And Ibsen’s rambling, pseudo-Romantic epic, all about a trickster lay about who travels the world, enjoys the contrast with Mr. Wilson’s clinical rigor – at least for the first few hours.

New York City has been very busy celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ibsen’s death this year. And BAM, very thoughtfully, has presented two instructively contrasting productions. Last month’s “Hedda Gabler” reminded us of Ibsen’s place as the father of modern prose drama; everything we recognize as naturalism, we owe in part to him. But Ibsen also generated tidal verse dramas, big monsters full of hallucination and moral quandary.

“Peer Gynt,” with more lines than the uncut “Hamlet,” wasn’t considered performable by its author. It’s a nightmare to stage: The rapscallion Peer, driven out of his hometown for abducting a bride, gallivants through a Troll hall, an asylum in Cairo, and several shipwrecks, not to mention brief stints as a prophet and archaeologist. He grows old on his travels, but finally does return home looking for absolution. Neither a very bad man nor a very good one, a dying Peer faces the demonic Button-Moulder and his ladle. Only if someone will vouch for him can Peer escape the “melting down” that the Button-Moulder threatens; only love can redeem such a weak, undisciplined soul.

On wide, nearly empty landscapes, the actors from the National Theatre of Bergen and the Norwegian Theatre of Oslo prance and grin. Mr. Wilson splits his Peer into three actors, and the first seriously overshadows the other two. In the first act, Henrik Rafaelsen hops adorably through Peer’s misadventures. This young Peer, lanky and goofy, has all the charm necessary to set fire to Mr. Wilson’s icy images. Bouncing along on tiptoe, he bowls through his adventures – we love him despite his many lies. But when less charming actors take over the role, Mr. Wilson’s grip threatens to stifle the play.

Four solid hours of patented Wilsonian coolness has its usual effect, separating the bloody-minded enthusiasts from the more conventional watchers. The intermission hemorrhaged audience members, but those leaving did so without resentment. In fact, in the lobby beforehand, some savvy theatergoers were planning out how long to stay. Mr. Wilson has borrowed so liberally from kabuki, he’ll be delighted to know even his audience obeys the Japanese conventions, wandering in and out as it pleases them.

What those who left missed, however, was some transcendent music from composer Michael Galasso (who also composed the hypnotic score for “In the Mood for Love”). Five men sitting at a table gradually begin to hum. Peer’s adored Solveig (Kjersti Sandal) can’t contain her love for him – it always turns into song. Each little aria pops out like a crocus in the snow, proving that no matter how firmly Mr. Wilson blankets this product in his trademark control, there will always be something lovely fighting back.

Until April 16 (30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100).