In an oft-quoted video interview, the Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami paid tribute to the joys of dozing in an auditorium. “I absolutely don’t like the films in which the filmmakers take their viewers hostage and provoke them,” he said. “I prefer the films that put their audiences to sleep in the theatre.”
I found myself thinking of this statement during the Canadian premiere of Will Eno’s Gnit at the Shaw Festival’s Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre. Director Tim Carroll’s production moves with the gentleness of a sleepwalker, and its somnambulant atmosphere sometimes feels like an intentional attempt to lull the audience, as might please Kiarostami. This peaceful approach nicely complements the mental estrangement of wayward protagonist Peter Gnit (Qasim Khan), while not doing much to clarify the staging’s broader goals.
Eno’s 2013 play riffs on Ibsen’s influential Peer Gynt, a winding, several-hour verse drama that’s rarely staged in its entirety. Gnit runs a more approachable two hours and 35 minutes (including intermission), and for its six-person cast, quadruple casting is the norm. Julia Course’s roles range from gravedigger to auctioneer, while Patrick Galligan embodies both reporter and sphinx. Mike Nadajewski even plays a character called Town, representing many citizens at once: “Some nights I get so drunk I think I’m a whole fucking town,” he explains.
The constant is Peter, who flees his mountainous hometown after enraging his neighbours by ruining a wedding. Abandoning his sick, in-debt mom (Nehassaiu deGannes), he spends decades travelling — from Morocco to an Egyptian asylum — in search of his true self. One can see why Mother opens the play with the advice to “never have children.”
Gnit hopscotches between tones, frequently counterpointing detailed, character-driven dialogue with metatheatrical winks to the audience. Curiously, though, Carroll’s production doesn’t make similar swerves. When the actors pause a conversation to break the fourth wall, they tend to speak in more or less the same cadence they’d just been using to address their scene partner.
Overall, the production renders Peter’s wide-ranging travels in a surprisingly quiet fashion. Hanne Loosen’s set largely revolves around a septet of variously sized earth-tone blocks — flexible, but far from fantastical (making this the second 2025 Shaw production to give fairytale-adjacent material a sparse physical treatment). Above hangs a large grid of thin rusty pipes, imbuing Act Two with a hair more dynamism by raining down materials like gravel, sand, and cheese.
This placid vibe produces some interesting effects. On an emotional level, Peter’s search for meaning goes nowhere; despite his action-packed surroundings, he remains rather numb. The sleepiness of this production captures that alienation quite evocatively.
In her 2021 Vulture review of Gnit off-Broadway, critic Helen Shaw saw another kind of absence in the text, one relating to spirituality: “Eno does his critique without resorting to faith-based arguments. His Gnit is a Passion Play without God, an atheist’s Pilgrim’s Progress… The original Peer is a man playing tug-of-war with redemption. In this version, nothing’s holding the other end of the rope.” That nothingness reverberates particularly clearly at the Shaw.
This is also a show about disconnection, a theme that seems to manifest in the performances — while the non-Khan actors rotate between their roles with impressive clarity, they don’t all operate in the same stylistic register (Gabriella Sundar Singh is far more subdued than the brassy Nadajewski, for instance). As a result, in this Gnit, the characters frequently appear to be lost within themselves, too busy wrestling with their own problems to notice the Norwegian trapezing through town. And though Peter struggles with basic empathy, Khan contrasts this sizable emotional deficiency with a disarmingly thoughtful demeanour, as if the character’s problem is that he’s overthinking life.
The production’s muted energy makes sense. But does it lead to a compelling theatrical experience? I’m not so sure. Gnit is a solid dramatization of a drifting existential crisis — but, many plays feature similarly lost protagonists, while also having other themes to chew on. Why a Peer Gynt adaptation now? For me, Carroll doesn’t fully answer the question. The show may be best suited to those who love the original enough that the worth of such an endeavour is self-evident.
Gnit runs at the Shaw Festival until October 4. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Liam Donovan
Liam is Intermission’s senior editor. His writing has appeared in publications like Maisonneuve, This, and NEXT. He loves the original Super Mario game very much.
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