UWM's GINT

Any production of Romulus Linney's Gint is going to be very, very ambitious. An entire life plays out in 2 hours with one intermission. Doing so with a cast exclusively consisting of students makes the challenge all the more difficult as the characters range drastically in age. Doing so without any set, minimal costuming and virtually no props? Laughably difficult. Directed by Jim Tasse, the UWM staging of the epic capably tackles the challenges of bringing the daunting work to life.

Prior to intermission, we have Glenn Widdicombe playing the title character--a man struggling to make something of himself in the wilds of Appalachia. Widdicombe has a youthful vitality about him that serves the role well. The strangely amplified reality of the script has every minute onstage representing a remarkably sweeping emotional compression of the character's life. We see him lusting after life and different women. He is ever out of reach of his one true love Sally Vicks. Vicks is played here by Anna Bisch. Bisch is both sweet and strong as a principled woman who is nevertheless drawn to a man who seems pathologically incapable of making anything of himself. 

Brittany Curran plays another iconic woman in Gint's life--his mother. It's not an easy thing for youth to play advanced age. There's considerable authority and weariness etched into the role that Curran has the good sense to downplay in her performance. She's shrewdly focussing her performance elsewhere. Curran's portrayal of Oldie Momma is much more centered on the emotional life of the character than the iconic figure that the story arc of the play has her being. She's more of a person and less of a symbolic persona than she could have been played as. This is a really good choice and it plays to Curran's strengths. 

After intermission, we see Michael Jeske in the role of an older Gint who has become insanely wealthy. A reversal in his fortunes finds him going on yet another diverse string of events. Jeske is given the challenge of playing a man fumbling and flailing in a search for himself at the end of his life. The journey is a nebulous one. It's difficult to find a center to it all that makes any sense, but Jeske does a pretty good job of holding it together through scenes that involve sex, a mental institution and a trial of sorts with a native american archetype. 

The rest of the cast plays a variety of different characters. Zachary Dean makes a strong impression as a patriarch of a group of razorback hogs. (It makes sense in context--trust me…there's a lot of thematic real estate spent on establishing the character's relationship with nature.) The mythic mysticism of the ruler of the razorbacks feels very gritty and concrete in Dean's performance. The scene in question might have gone horribly wrong without Dean striking the right balance between a flat authority figure in a "journey of the hero" legend and a very realistic character with a very earthy personality. Cheong-Hyeon Park also makes a memorable appearance as the native american archetype that Gint encounters near the end of his journey. There's a striking confidence and wisdom in his portrayal that gives the character an vivid impression of authority. This is particularly impressive as the script doesn't give him much to work with in the way of establishing that authority. He has to appear onstage and command respect. Park does a really good job of doing so with a script that gives him very little room to maneuver around in. 

UWM Peck School of the Arts' production of Gint runs through December 8th at Kenilworth Studio 508 on 1925 East Kenilworth Place. For ticket reservations, call 414-229-4308 or visit UWM online.