A very strong ensemble of some of Shaw’s (and Canada’s) best highlight this strange(r than usual) Will Eno show, an adaptation of Ibsen’s epic Peer Gynt that falsely claims you don’t need to know the original to follow along. You absolutely need to know the original in order to feel rooted at all in this fever dream of theme and tiny nods at plot. Or maybe you don’t need to know the original but you need a study guide, or return visits, or a far more in-depth introduction than what the festival’s otherwise excellent podcast had to offer (you get the sense that Eno and director Tim Carroll were trying not to spoil anything but I certainly would have traded some small elements of surprise for a bit of necessary hand-holding).

This is my least favourite type of production to review. I don’t think the company did this show wrong or even necessarily that it’s a bad play (I generally love Will Eno), I just feel like I completely didn’t get it. I felt lost and overwhelmed the entire play, and not in that immersive way that is sometimes frustratingly but affectingly the point. The best I can say here is that your mileage may possibly vary but I wouldn’t bet on Gnit, even though Will Eno in the studio space seems like best-of-the-season kind of programming (it certainly was in the case of Middletown back in 2017). Eno’s work is usually marked by its unflinching honesty about the human experience but, if this is that, it’s far too opaque to see the centre of.