Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – TFANA’s production of GNIT, Will Eno’s absurdist take on Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt”, takes a hard look at life for what it is

• By drediman
• November 21, 2021
• No Comments

Last week at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, I attended Theatre for a New Audience’s production of Gnit, playwright Will Eno’s attempt at loosely adapting Ibsen’s epic and – in my opinion – unwieldy Peer Gynt. Over the years, Mr. Eno has made a career out of mining and theatricalizing the existential dilemmas of life. In plays such as Thom Pain (based on nothing), The Realistic Jones, and Open House, he’s disarmed many a theater goer (including yours truly) with his distinctively bleak yet snarky sense of humor, which has spiked his pursuit of the meaning of it all.

In Gnit – which premiered in 2013 at the Humana Festival – the playwright actually sticks very closely to Ibsen’s picaresque blueprint. The main differences include doing away with the fantastical elements of the underlying five-act play (e.g., gone are the trolls and witches), as well as replacing the grand scope of Ibsen’s play with biting Brechtian absurdity. In a parade of compact and incisively written scenes, these shifts have made the satiric parallels to our own world more easily apparent. These departures have also allowed Mr. Eno to make, as potently as possible, the point that the quest for individualism is futile in an existentially pointless world. As such, Gnit actually makes for an unlikely companion piece to Simon Stephens’ terrific new play Morning Sun, which similarly attempts to take a good hard look at life for what it actually is.

One of the production’s fascinating and probably logistically-driven choices is to have a cast of only six portray the play’s scores of characters. Thankfully, Gnit is blessed with a stellar cast of top flight character actors whose sense of timing and ability to switch roles on a dime are a joy to watch. As Peter Gnit, Joe Curnutte gives a masterful performance that perfectly captures the character’s persistent mediocrity. Director Oliver Butlier (a frequent collaborator of Mr. Eno’s) keeps the pacing tight but playful throughout. The production closes today.

RECOMMENDED

GNIT
Off-Broadway, Play
Theatre for a New Audience
2 hours, 10 minutes (including an intermission)
Through November 21