Review Roundup: Will Eno's GNIT Opens at Theatre for a New Audience

Theatre for a New Audience opened their 2021-2022 season with the New York premiere of Will Eno's Gnit (October 30 - November 21, 2021), a reimagining of Peer Gynt directed by Eno's frequent collaborator Oliver Butler that had four preview performances at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center before being shuttered due to the pandemic.

Peter Gnit, a modern-day version of Ibsen's heroic character Peer Gynt, is a carefree young man on a reckless search for Experience and the True Self. Armed with tales from his mother of his early greatness and his absent father, he heads out into the world. Like all true stories of human endeavor and adventure, Gnit is part horror story, part fairy tale, and part road movie. A timely reckoning with received notions of Rugged Individualism and the self-made person. The play is performed with a 19-month break, filled with real-life tales of isolation, loss, courage, and love, and a 15-minute intermission.

The cast features Jasmine Batchelor, Jordan Bellow, Joe Curnutte, Christy Escobar, Deborah Hedwall, and David Shih.

The creative team includes Kimie Nishikawa (Set Design), Ásta Bennie Hostetter and Avery Reed (Costume Design), Amith Chandrashaker (Lighting Design), Lee Kinney (Sound Design), Daniel Kluger (Composer).

See what the critics are saying...

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Maya Phillips, The New York Times: "There is a limit to the magic powers of language," Peter says as he tells a story to his dying mother. The lesson, that cleverness can fail when wordplay and chin-stroking ruminations distract, is one that Eno himself could have taken to heart. "Gnit" is brainy and full of rhetorical magic, but with more dimension and greater relevance it could be spellbinding.

Helen Shaw, New York Magazine/Vulture: Gnit is a satire about the absurdities of self-confidence, and right now it doesn't have a lot of meat to feed on. I kept thinking of that set, dreaming all last year. The show woke up - but our confidence is still back there somewhere in the ghost light, still asleep.

Regina Robbins, Time Out New York: Peer Gynt was initially received with a mix of praise and skepticism. Eno's work has often divided audiences similarly, with some calling him an heir to Samuel Beckett and others protesting that, like Peter, he falls short of realizing the lofty goals he sets. Gnit almost seems like a response to such critics, as if to say: I may be on a doomed quest for meaning, but just go with it.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Set against all this pastoral beauty are Peter Gnit and his mother, who could not be more Eno in their verbal warfare with themselves and others. It's difficult to imagine a more sweet, innocuous-looking jerk than Joe Curnutte's Peter and a more clear-eyed critic of a parent than Deborah Hedwall's mother. Curnutte and Hedwall together create comedy heaven, and could easily take their mother-and-son act on the road.

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