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Last year, while researching productions that were on indefinite pause, I saw a picture of theGnitset.
How did we get here?
only to return home to his long-suffering love Solveig, whose forgiveness saves him.
Those latter two makePeer Gyntkind of a chore to stage today.
The icky-sticky stuff between Peer and Solveig.
In the Ibsen, Peer finds peace at her breast, like a baby.
To the boy inside, youre mother and nurse!
he cries, as she rocks him.
Critically, objectively, thoughtfully … one barfs.
So you might understand why Enos version gets the heck away from Ibsen.
But Enos cuts also go deep.
Gone are Ibsens rhyming couplets, the emphasis on salvation, any mention of Hell or divine punishment.
Gone too is the smushy ending.
Yet Eno does his critique without resorting to faith-based arguments.
HisGnitis a Passion Play without God, an atheistsPilgrims Progress.
The original Peer is a man playing tug-of-war with redemption.
In this version, nothings holding the other end of the rope.
Joe Curnutte plays Peter, a blonde, blithe, self-involved guy who is catnip to women.
Who was that, do you know?
The handsome guy with the milk?
(Its also a good excuse for people to do accents.)
Gnitis an odd night at the theater, full of suspended understanding and puzzled laughter.
These not-jokes often take the form of people saying something serious and the listener simply not caring.
Peter tries to tell a reporter (Bellow again) about the way he feels unmoored.
The reporter, dashing down notes, listens with half an ear.
Yeah, no, thats pretty good, quite the poet wow.
It does go pretty fast, doesnt it.
The show cracks its own heart on this last point.
Peter stands by his mother as she dies, and for once his prattling stills.
What do you say?
A person says what?
Peter asks, and the show takes an intermission because it just doesnt want to go on anymore.
Theres no preshow music, which means the audience speaks in whispers.
Once the actors appear, they speak clearly but softly too.
Its a shadowy, quiet show.
Theres even a mysterious figure called The Middleplayedby a shadow.
Call me peace, or death.
Im what you cant handle, the shadow says.
And Im not actually real, so youll never get over me.
Just make a run at live with me.
Would have it seemed so explicitly a self-flagellation over white male self-regard?
(Curnutte is the only white guy in the show.)
Would it have struck me as funnier before a shadow swallowed up the whole world?
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.
Gnitis at Theater for a New Audience through November 21.
