GNIT
Written by Will Eno
Directed by Oliver Butler
Theatre for a New Audience
Polonsky Shakespeare Center
March 10, 2020
Production website
💉💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
I loved, loved, loved this show. It is one of the very few “5 needle” productions I have given out over the past few years. Every single moment of the play was a treasure. I couldn’t wait for the next scene or the next change in plot. Even after its 2+ hour run time, I wanted more and more. I have read so many posts in Facebook over Spring Break of my friends and former students taking in Moulin Rouge, Come From Away, The Inheritance, and on and on and rightly raving about each show. BUT, if they miss Gnit, they are missing New York theatre at its very best! If my friends and former students value my opinion, then THIS must become their must see! Here are a few reasons this play thrills:
- Will Eno simply writes for live theatre. So many plays that I have seen just seem like television scripts being put in front of a live audience and called theatre. Mr. Eno really understands what the “live dynamic” can do in the theatre and exploits it in the most interesting ways.
- Gnit really embraces Theatre of the Absurd in the most playful accessible way. It is so challenging to write of “waiting” and an existential world where meaning has left. These plays can be so boring and so dreadfully negative, but Will Eno takes such a playful, interesting take on this reality.
- Will Eno is a master at finding the poetic in the simplest of moments. I just wish I could remember more of he lines as they passed by the stage.
- The story of Gnit – the plot of Peer Gynt and even Pippin is so well known but here we are not so concerned WHAT is going to happen – se are so much more interestingly interested in HOW we are going to get there.
- It is fun and bitter and sarcastic and acerbic in the best possible way! As a sarcastic person myself, I wish I could roll off these lines so fluently.
If it isn’t clear, from my writing so far – this is THE play to be seeing if it is going to be possible around or after this cornovirus epidemic.