this week in broadway

A HELLUVA TOWN: TWO STRANGERS MEET CUTE IN NEW YORK CITY

Robin Rainey (Christiani Pitts) and Dougal Todd (Sam Tutty) are about to have a time to remember in Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) (photo by Matthew Murphy)

TWO STRANGERS (CARRY A CAKE ACROSS NEW YORK)
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 22, $69-$299
twostrangersmusical.com

Broadway shows set in New York City have a difficult task getting things right, needing to satisfy tourists as well as native New Yorkers, who will immediately criticize any geographic or sociocultural mistakes while tiring of genre clichés about the City That Never Sleeps. For every Hell’s Kitchen, there’s a New York, New York.

Happily, the charming new Broadway musical Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) gets things right.

It begins with Dougal Todd’s (Sam Tutty) arrival in New York City from London, with a childlike gleam in his eye and a bounce in his step, a wide-eyed ingénue deliriously excited to see as much as he possibly can during his short visit, his first ever overseas. “New York is kind of my second home,” he tells Robin Rainey (Christiani Pitts), who has picked him up at the airport. “The Empire State, the White House, the Golden Gate Bridge.” After a wild and woolly two days — in which, among other things, he stood outside the Freedom Tower, Katz’s Deli, and the Tenement Museum because he couldn’t afford to go inside — he still has that gleam and bounce, a sweetly infectious and innocent worldview that rubs off on both Robin and the audience.

Dougal lives at home with his mother, “big Polly,” and works in a local movie theater. His only ambition seems to be to keep marveling at life. He’s in New York to attend the wedding of his father, Mark, who deserted them before Dougal’s birth. “Technically he didn’t leave me because I wasn’t actually born yet,” he explains to Robin.

Raised by her grandmother in Brooklyn, Robin toils at Bump ‘n’ Grind Coffee in the East Village and just tries to survive day to day, hiding away any dreams she might have of finding the right career or the right partner. Robin’s older sister, Melissa, who is thirty, is marrying Mark, an extremely successful fifty-seven-year-old businessman. Robin disapproves of her sister’s choice and is irritated when Dougal starts playfully referring to her as Auntie Robin, since they are both in their midtwenties.

“My town: / where everyone has an apartment to spare with a skyline view, / where even improbable dreams come true. / Where everything comes with a smile, a high five, and a side of cheese; / I’m down on my knees,” Robin sings sarcastically. Dougal responds enthusiastically, “She’s called the Big Apple / No one knows why / But she’s my kind of town and I’m her kind of street-smart guy. / I’ll stroll up the Broadway / I’ll order a beer / I’ll scream at the Statue of Liberty / ‘Hey lady! I’m walkin’ here!’”

Melissa has given Robin two important responsibilities: picking up the wedding cake and bridal stockings. When Dougal insists on going with her to the bakery, they head off on a whirlwind adventure that takes them from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high.

Robin Rainey (Christiani Pitts) and Dougal Todd (Sam Tutty) reach highs and lows in delightful new musical from England (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Two Strangers might refer to itself as a musical comedy, but it is closer to a play with music. Composers and lyricists Jim Barne and Kit Buchan (Catastrophe Bay, Mona Loser) have written a terrific book that firmly establishes the two characters and their individual and mutual quests. Nearly all the songs feel organic to the story, further defining Dougal and Robin on the outside and the inside. Dougal expresses his longing for his father in “Dad,” singing “‘Dad,’ Is that a word that I can use for you? / It’s been a while since we had news from you / Since your picture left the frame.” In “What’ll It Be,” Robin confesses, “And I stare / through the windows at the world / — this bit of world / that I can see — / and I try / not to think about that girl / who looked like me . . . / . . . who laughed, / and danced, / and knew what she was facing; / who believed / the world / was hers to find a place in; / and I tell myself / this year could be the right year / but we both know / this time tomorrow I’ll be right here. . . .”

Two numbers do fall flat, “On the App,” in which Dougal encourages Robin to swipe through Tinder while on the subway, and “Under the Mistletoe,” a Christmas fantasy they sing in the back of an Uber; it would also trim the show to a more streamlined 110 minutes or so without an intermission. Otherwise, the songs glitter under Tim Jackson’s inventive direction and choreography, Tony Gayle’s sound design that takes us from the airport to the subway to a nightclub, and Lux Pyramid’s lovely orchestrations, performed by an onstage orchestra consisting of conductor Ted Arthur on keys, Kevin Ramessar on guitar, Lee Nadel on bass, Rocky Bryant on drums, and Jessie Linden on percussion. Soutra Gilmour’s rotating set features a collection of monochromatic luggage that open up to reveal a minibar, a bed, and other elements, cleverly lit by Jack Knowles with LED strips and spots. Gilmour also designed the costumes, which offer a late surprise.

Tutty (Dear Evan Hansen) is adorable in his Broadway debut; you just want to run up and hug him (but please don’t). Dougal looks at the city in the way not only tourists but longtime denizens should, with wonder and happiness and promise. Pitts, who has appeared in such other New York City shows as A Bronx Tale and King Kong, is heart-wrenching as Robin, who believes she has hit a dead end and needs to be reenergized. Their chemistry is evident from their first meet-cute bump.

Two Strangers opens with suitcases becoming radios that broadcast sports, weather, and news alternately from America and England until they meld together. It’s a delightful metaphor for what follows, an award-winning show about a British man and an American woman that has successfully journeyed across the pond and is now selling out at the Longacre Theatre, where, afterward, you will experience New York City with a gleam in your eye and bounce in your step.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JUST ONE PUNCH: HARROWING PLAY EXITS BROADWAY RING

Will Harrison leads an excellent cast in harrowing true story (photo by Matthew Murphy)

PUNCH
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through November 2, $94-$235.50
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Will Harrison makes an electrifying Broadway debut as a young Nottingham man whose life changes forever on a wild night in James Graham’s Punch, continuing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 2 though deserving of a longer run. However, the final shows can be livestreamed with a twenty-four-hour replay for $75.

Harrison stars as Jacob in the true story, based on the memoir Right from Wrong by Jacob Dunne, which explores bullying, drugs, class, and restorative justice. One night, Jacob and his large gang of friends are out drinking and snorting as they barhop through Nottingham, Jacob in search of some action.

“This is the problem, no one likes to admit . . . Doing bad things . . . creates good feelings. It just does,” Jacob tells the audience. “Because there is no other high in the world, forget your fuckin’ skunk or spice or smack or scratch, none of it can beat the buzz that comes with beatin’ up a slippin’ bastard in defence of a mate. The look in their eyes when they’re impressed, grateful, respectful . . . and even a bit fuckin’ scared of you now too . . . Barrelling back to someone’s house, covered in blood and validation. . . . Being chased and chasing highs, rushing round, scoring drugs and doing deals, seeking out parties and pulling girls. People dancing, trance like, getting high, snogging. Problem for someone like me is that cause I’d lived on the outskirts, coz mum had kept our heads down . . . not a lot of people knew us. And thriving and surviving in this world is all about your reputation, who you are . . . Which means I . . . have to always go farther, drink faster, walk taller. And most importantly . . . fight. Fight harder. Harder than anyone else.”

Chasing those highs, nineteen-year-old Jacob unleashes a massive punch on a random stranger just for kicks, but when the young man, twenty-eight-year-old James Hodgkinson, dies as a result of the altercation, Jacob is sent to prison while James’s parents, David Hodgkinson (Sam Robards) and Joan Scourfield (Victoria Clark), deal with the tragic loss of their son and contemplate whether they should forgive Jacob.

The energetic, fast-paced first act shifts between the punch and its immediate aftermath and a group therapy session led by Sandra (Lucy Taylor, who also plays Jacob’s mother and a probation officer), where Jacob shares his story with others. Sandra describes it as a place for “talking and listening. Difficult conversations.” Those conversations center on restorative justice, as Jacob, Joan, and David decide if they are going to meet face-to-face.

Victoria Clark and Sam Robards star as parents facing a horrific tragedy in Punch (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The first half of Punch unfolds like a thrilling boxing match, with aggressive, breathtaking movement by Leanne Pinder as Jacob and his friends make their way across and under set and costume designer Anna Fleischle’s reimagining of Trent Bridge in Nottingham, propelled by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s scorching original music and sound design. Robbie Butler’s lighting is like a character unto itself, a large, nearly complete circle hovering above the stage, consisting of rows of chasing lights that change color; it made me think of a boxing ring even though it isn’t square.

Graham (Ink, Dear England) and first-time Broadway director Adam Penford slow things down after intermission, as if the fighters have tired out, their tanks running out. Yes, it’s based on what actually happened, but it involves a whole lot of sitting around and talking, falling short of the knockout blow. Two-time Tony winner Clark (Kimberly Akimbo, The Light in the Piazza) and Robards (The 39 Steps, Absurd Person Singular) are powerful as James’s parents, tenderly dealing with a situation that is every mother and father’s nightmare.

But the play belongs to Harrison, who was born in Ithaca and raised in Massachusetts. He fully inhabits the British Jacob, physically and psychologically; you can’t take your eyes off him. Harrison made an impressive off-Broadway debut in 2023 as a young navy medic in Keith Bunin’s The Coast Starlight at Lincoln Center and has followed that up with this Tony-worthy performance; he is a rising star with a bright future.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NOTHING TO SAY OR DO? A SAMUEL BECKETT HAT TRICK IN NEW YORK

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter star in Broadway smash version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (photo by Andy Henderson)

WAITING FOR GODOT
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 4, $98.56-$558.88
godotbroadway.com
www.thehudsonbroadway.com

“There’s nothing to do,” Vladimir tells Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s 1953 masterpiece Waiting for Godot.

There’s plenty to do for Beckett fans in New York City right now, much but not all of it a most excellent adventure.

The talk of the town is Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reprising — well, channeling? — their roles from 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the 1991 and 2020 sequels in Godot at the Hudson Theatre. Action star Reeves is making his Broadway debut as Estragon (Gogo) in Jamie Lloyd’s bumpy adaptation, while Winter returns to the Great White Way for the first time in forty-four years as Vladimir (Didi).

Reeves and Winter follow in the formidable footsteps of such duos as Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, and Robin Williams and Steve Martin and, for the most part, hold the audience’s attention. Gogo and Didi usually find themselves in a strange, dark wasteland, with only a single bare tree, a country road, and a solitary stone as they contemplate life and death, heaven and hell, and existence and humanity, but Lloyd and set designer Soutra Gilmour locate them inside a giant tube that is part tunnel, part circular skateboard ramp, part existential void in space. Resembling abandoned vaudevillians in all black, sporting impressive bowlers (the costumes are also by Gilmour), they sit at the edge of the tube, feet dangling, waiting for the mysterious Godot to arrive and, perhaps, bring meaning to their sad, pathetic lives.

They are visited instead by the loud, blustery Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden) and his menial, an apparent servant named Lucky (Michael Patrick Thornton). Pozzo usually leads Lucky around by a rope around his neck — evoking master and slave, circus ringleader and animal performer while referencing the rope Gogo had mentioned earlier when he and Didi considered hanging themselves — but here Lloyd has the verbally abusive Pozzo pushing Lucky, who is in a wheelchair, altering their dynamic. Curiously, Lucky breaks the fourth wall several times, acknowledging the audience and encouraging them to clap after he does his dance (with his head and hands). In addition, a young boy (Eric Williams or Zaynn Arora) shares important information with Gogo and Didi.

Lloyd (A Doll’s House, Sunset Blvd.) has slimmed down the show to just over two hours including intermission, so the pacing works well. Lloyd’s decision to get rid of nearly all the usual props, including a key carrot that Gogo chews in an annoying manner, seems like overkill. There’s a perpetual droning hum of doom hovering over the proceedings (the sound is by Ben and Max Ringham), contrasting Jon Clark’s subtle lighting shifts, highlighted by dazzling surprises at the end of each act.

Reeves and Winter may not display a wide range of emotions, but they avail themselves well enough to keep the audience engaged. At one point Didi says, “This is not boring you I hope,” looking out at us, and we essentially answer no.

Bill and Ted enthusiasts may whoop when Gogo says, “Back to back like in the good old days,” and the two actors stand back to back and play air guitar, echoing what they do in the film series, but the reference feels out of place in a show that exists in a barren emptiness and is about nothing (and everything).

“The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing,” Bill says in the first movie, quoting Socrates. Ted responds, “That’s us, dude.”

Party on, dudes!

Stephen Rea is mesmerizing as a man listening to his past in Krapp’s Last Tape (photo courtesy Patricio Cassinoni)

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
Through October 19, $83-$130
nyuskirball.org

“Nothing to say,” an old man declares in Samuel Beckett’s 1958 autobiographical classic, Krapp’s Last Tape, a fascinating kind of companion piece to Waiting for Godot.

In 2012, Irish actor Stephen Rea decided to go into a studio and perform the prerecorded sections of Krapp’s Last Tape, in case he was ever asked to do the one-man show, in which a dissatisfied man listens to tapes his younger self made thirty years before. Rea is now touring the play, which continues at the NYU Skirball Center through October 19.

Jamie Vartan’s spare set features a desk in the center, an overhead hanging light, and a door at the back, stage right. Paul Keogan’s shadowy lighting maintains an old-fashioned vaudeville black-and-white feel. The past is present in both Vicky Featherstone’s taut staging and the theme of the play.

The show begins with Krapp slowly opening a hilariously long drawer and removing a banana. He eats the fruit — the yellow of the banana stands out from the otherwise colorless gloom — and tosses the peel onto the floor, where, of course, he soon slips on it. He does not make the same mistake twice.

To celebrate his birthday, he is going to listen to one of his old reel-to-reel tapes, the one he made when he turned thirty-nine, discussing his life. He brings in the machine and a stack of tapes, carefully searching for box three, spool five, taking great delight in saying the word “spool” over and over again. “Thirty-nine today, sound as a bell, apart from my old weakness, and intellectually I have now every reason to suspect at the . . . crest of the wave — or thereabouts,” he listens to his old self explain. “Good to be back in my den, in my old rags. Have just eaten I regret to say three bananas and only with difficulty refrained from a fourth. Fatal things for a man with my condition. Cut ’em out! The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness round me I feel less alone. In a way. I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to . . . me. Krapp.”

Not much has changed in those thirty years; his loneliness in the darkness is palpable. He looks up the meaning of “viduity,” sings, and recalls a romantic evening on a lake. But the tape does not provide him with happiness; he barks out, “Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that. Thank God that’s all done with anyway.”

What’s next? Well, the play’s French title is La Dernière Bande, or “The Last Tape.”

Krapp’s Last Tape has previously been performed by such actors as Patrick Magee, Harold Pinter, Brian Dennehy, and Michael Gambon; I’ve seen it with John Hurt at BAM and, earlier this year, F. Murray Abraham at the Irish Rep. The play, a haunting examination of time, memory, and the futility of language, works best in more intimate quarters; it gets a bit lost at the Skirball, even at only about fifty minutes.

Rea (A Particle of Dread, Cyprus Avenue) inhabits the character with a graceful elegance despite Krapp’s pathetic, sad-sack circumstances, at times recalling Buster Keaton, one of Beckett’s favorites. It’s a bravura performance that I would have loved to see in a significantly smaller venue.

Druid production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame comes to Irish Arts Center for monthlong run (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

ENDGAME
Irish Arts Center, JL Greene Theatre
726 Eleventh Ave. between Fifty-First & Fifty-Second Sts.
October 22 – November 23, $25-$86
irishartscenter.org

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,” Nell tells Nagg in Samuel Beckett’s 1957 chess-inspired Endgame, which takes place during some kind of apocalypse as four characters contemplate their fate in a dingy basement dungeon, two of them living in garbage cans.

In a conversation in the Skirball program for Krapp’s Last Tape, Stephen Rea tells director Vicky Featherstone and Dr. Tanya Dean, “Endgame is a tough thing. I remember Beckett saying he loved Endgame, and he didn’t like Waiting for Godot. And I said, ‘Well, it’s been absorbed.’”

Rea played Clov in the 1976 Royal Court production of Endgame; I’ve seen the show twice, in 2008 at BAM with Max Casella, Alvin Epstein, Elaine Stritch, and John Turturro, and in 2023 at the Irish Rep with John Douglas Thompson, Bill Irwin, Joe Grifasi, and Patrice Johnson Chevannes. From October 22 through November 23, Galway’s Druid theater company will be presenting Endgame at the Irish Arts Center, with Tony winner Marie Mullen, Bosco Hogan, Aaron Monaghan, and Rory Nolan, directed by Tony winner Garry Hynes. As with Soutra Gilmour’s set for Waiting for Godot on Broadway, Francis O’Connor’s scenic design for Endgame also emphasizes the circularity of life.

Monaghan, who plays Clov, previously starred as Estragon opposite Marty Rea (no relation to Stephen) in Druid and Hynes’s Waiting for Godot at Lincoln Center’s 2018 White Light Festival. Hynes also helmed a stunning Richard III starring Monaghan in 2019 as well as The Beauty Queen of Leenane at BAM in 2017, with Marty Rea and Mullen.

Endgame is part of Druid’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. In the play, Clov shouts, “The end is terrific!” But luckily for theatregoers, the end appears to be nowhere in sight for Druid, or for seeing Beckett in New York.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

GENIUS STROKES: HIRSCHFELD AND SONDHEIM AT THE ALGONQUIN

“Strokes of Genius: Hirschfeld at the Algonquin” continues through September 20 at historic hotel (photo © the Al Hirschfeld Foundation)

STROKES OF GENIUS: HIRSCHFELD AT THE ALGONQUIN
The Algonquin Hotel Oak Room
59 West 44th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through September 20, free, noon – 7:00 pm
www.alhirschfeldfoundation.org
www.algonquinhotel.com

On September 9, theater stars came out of the woodwork — or, actually, their framed caricatures on the walls of the Alqonquin’s famed Oak Room — to celebrate the opening of the new exhibition “Strokes of Genius: Hirschfeld at the Algonquin” as well as the launch of the oversize poster book Hirschfeld’s Sondheim (Abrams ComicArts, $29.99).

Among those on hand to share their stories about being drawn by Al Hirschfeld, the St. Louis–born artist who spent decades making black-and-white portraits of Broadway celebrities, writers, and other famous names, were Tony winners Danny Burstein, John Leguizamo, and Len Cariou, Emmy winner and Tony nominee Lonny Price, Tony nominee and Obie winner Charles Busch, Obie winner Jackie Hoffman, Tony nominee Veanne Cox, and Broadway stalwart Jim Walton. Al Hirschfeld Foundation creative director David Leopold presented several of them with reproductions of the images they are in.

As you walk around the space, you’ll see Cathy Rigby in Peter Pan, Yul Brynner in The King and I, Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner in Star Trek, and Liza Minnelli, George Gershwin, Carol Burnett, Zero Mostel, Katharine Hepburn, Leonard Bernstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Stephen Sondheim, Barbra Streisand, Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, the Grateful Dead, the casts of The Phantom of the Opera, The Sopranos, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the Algonquin Round Table, and a few self-portraits.

Meanwhile, Hirschfeld’s Sondheim consists of ready-to-frame posters of drawings from West Side Story, Passion, Company, Getting Away with Murder, Assassins, Into the Woods, and many more in addition to a graphic timeline; each drawing is accompanied by a brief anecdote. “I can hardly think of a better way to memorialize Steve and his art other than actually watching his shows or listening to his songs,” Bernadette Peters writes in the introduction. “Al, in a single image, captures a memorable emotion, indelibly etching out hearts and memories with Steve’s artistic contributions.”

Longtime theater critic Ben Brantley explains in his foreword, “In these drawings, I have found something like a past-recapturing, Proustian madeleine, made of ink instead of flour and sugar. These seemingly simple pen strokes — and the ellipsis of the white space, which your own, happily collaborative mind fills in — are anything but static. They tremble with energy, tension, and, above all, character, as it is conjured in real time on a stage.”

The exhibit at the Algonquin continues through September 20; an online companion show runs at Helicline Fine Art until November 2.

“It’s hard to imagine twentieth-century Broadway without either Hirschfeld or Sondheim,” Leopold writes in the book’s afterword. “Both men admired each other’s work, and both loved the theater, their legacies strengthened by remaining a presence on the Great White Way with two Broadway houses named in their honor.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE SITE WHERE IT HAPPENED: HAMILTON SING-A-LONG AT THE OLD STONE HOUSE

Fans can sing along to the Hamilton movie at the place where the Battle of Brooklyn happened

HAMILTON SING-A-LONG
Old Stone House & Washington Park
336 Third St., Brooklyn
Thursday, August 14, free with RSVP, 7:30
theoldstonehouse.org

Every summer, the Old Stone House commemorates the August 27, 1776, Battle of Brooklyn, the first military engagement following the signing of the Declaration of Independence on August 2 at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. This year the historic site will be hosting “Revolutionary Brooklyn,” including walking tours, a short theatrical farce, a remembrance ceremony, a Constitution handwriting session, and a screening of the 2020 film Hamilton, a live stage recording of the smash 2015 Broadway musical that won eleven Tony Awards and is still running at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

Directed by Thomas Kail and written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the film features Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler, Christopher Jackson as George Washington, Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, Anthony Ramos as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, Okieriete Onaodowan as Hercules Mulligan and James Madison, and Jonathan Groff as King George III. On August 14 at 7:30, fans can come to Washington Park and sing along to such favorite numbers as “My Shot,” “Non-Stop,” and “The Room Where It Happens.” Attendees can bring their own lawn chair or blanket and party on the exact place where the Battle of Brooklyn happened 249 years ago; admission is free with advance RSVP.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

BLOWING IT UP: JEAN SMART RETURNS TO BROADWAY IN CALL ME IZZY

Jean Smart makes a triumphant return to Broadway in Call Me Izzy (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

CALL ME IZZY
Studio 54
254 West 54th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 17, $69-$399
212-719-1300
callmeizzyplay.com

Baton Rouge native Jamie Wax’s debut play, Call Me Izzy, is a darkly funny and insightful one-person drama, an exploration of an all-too-familiar topic: domestic abuse. Although it borders on clichéd situations and flirts with poverty porn, it never tips over the edge. The stellar production, directed by Sarna Lapine and anchored by an exquisite performance by six-time Emmy winner and Tony and Grammy nominee Jean Smart, makes it much more.

In a triumphant return to Broadway after nearly twenty-five years, Smart portrays Isabelle Scutley, née Fontenot, a woman living with her brutish husband, a pipe fitter named Ferd, in a mobile home in the fictional Louisiana Lady Trailer Park in the real town of Mansfield, Louisiana. Telling her story directly to the audience, Isabelle, who was married at seventeen and got a cemetery plot as a wedding present from her husband, has been trying to establish her own identity since she was a child, but under societal constraints and Ferd’s firm thumb she has rarely had a true sense of self.

Her sadness is immediately invoked as she discusses the blue toilet cleaner she loves using, which Ferd hates. She announces, “Blue . . . Azure . . . Sapphire . . . Swirlin’ cerulean . . . Lapis lazuli . . . Indigo!,” the colors serving as metaphors for the different shades of blue she has experienced in her life. Donald Holder’s lighting shifts accordingly.

Inspired by her fourth-grade performance of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” at the Arbor Day Pageant, Izzy decides to become a poet, imbued by an inner strength. Over the years, she compiles dozens and dozens of poetry journals, never showing them to anyone but finding solace in them. At the start of the play, we see her locked in the bathroom, using an eyebrow pencil to scribble on toilet paper.

“If you write something and no one ever reads it, does it even exist?” she asks. “Do I exist? Do you exist?”

Smart is a consummate raconteur, and soon Izzy’s story is revealed, involving a concerned neighbor named Rosalie Chedville, Izzy’s first library card, the free Introduction to Poetry and Creative Writing class taught by Professor Dwight Heckerling at Northwest Louisiana Community College, and Shakespeare’s sonnets; she is soon quoting from Henry VI. (Smart played both Queen Margaret and Lady Elizabeth Grey from Henry VI at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1976–77.) Izzy lets Rosalie read some of her poems and becomes energized, rediscovering her purpose, and she even participates in a poetry contest where the prize is fifteen thousand dollars and a two-month residency in Brewster, Massachusetts. But when she wins the fellowship, Ferd is not exactly jumping for joy. Smart has the audience in the palm of her hand, making us understand the character’s mix of elation, confusion, and dread.

Jean Smart stars as an abused woman living in a trailer park in Call Me Izzy at Studio 54 (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Wax (Evangeline) is a stand-up comedian, actor, and longtime contributing correspondent for CBS News. Call Me Izzy, which he began writing in 1991, was inspired by the real-life story of one of his aunts and interviews he conducted with more than two dozen survivors of domestic abuse, and the play feels more authentic than manipulative or reductive. He fills the narrative with references, both subtle and crystal-clear, to the old-fashioned male-female dynamic that still remains in American culture. Her mother advises her, “The pickins’ in this town are real slim. It’s better to have a broken arm than no arm at all.”

Izzy hides her poetry in a tampon box, where she knows Ferd will not look — repurposing packaging that relates to her premenopausal years of fertility. The name of their town is Mansfield, and she points out that there used to be a Fruit of the Loom factory nearby, a company that, back in the day, primarily made underwear for men. She notes that when she first learned “Trees,” she assumed Joyce Kilmer was a woman, but when she is told he is a man, she thinks, “Well, that figures.”

Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s set switches from the cramped trailer park bathroom, with a working toilet, sink, mirror, step stool, and battery-powered radio, to a kitchen table and chairs outside, a black barrier sliding to create doorways and walls. Projections place the action in a forest as the sun rises and sets. Beth Lake’s sound immerses the audience in the melody of nature — and flushing — along with original music by T Bone Burnett and David Mansfield. The costumes, by Tom Broecker, range from a bathrobe to jeans and a flannel shirt.

Lapine (Dracula, Little Women) keeps things moving smoothly through the play’s hundred minutes, but the show belongs to Smart, who has the rapturous audience behind her every step of the way. At the matinee I saw, applause broke out after numerous scenes not just for Smart’s acting talent but for choices Izzy makes.

Smart was nominated for a Tony for her portrayal of Lorraine Sheldon in the 2000 revival of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s The Man Who Came to Dinner and for a Drama Desk Award for her performance in Jane Chambers’s 1980 lesbian drama, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, but most fans know her from such popular series as Designing Women, Hacks, and Mare of Easttown; she has won Emmys for roles on Frasier, Hacks, and Samantha Who? She is in full command of the stage, and her relationship with the audience is almost conversational, as if we are friends with her. She does not turn Izzy into a heroic figure or melodramatic victim but a woman who wants more, who has been taught that she should remain in her station and exhibit little or no individuality — that maybe she is at least partially responsible for the abuse Ferd heaps on her. But perhaps her time has come to look at herself with newfound respect and admiration.

“I don’t mind being invisible,” she says.

But later, she declares, “I want to blow up this trailer, blow up this whole life.”

Now, that’s something worth applauding.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

A COFFEE HOUSE TONY AWARDS PREVIEW WITH MARK RIFKIN, SIMON JONES, DAVID BARBOUR, AND MARTHA WADE STEKETEE

Who: Simon Jones, David Barbour, Martha Wade Steketee, and Mark Rifkin, plus Steve Ross
What: Tony Awards preview and cabaret concert
Where: The Coffee House Club at the Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Ave. between Eleventh & Twelfth Sts.
When: Wednesday, June 4, free for members, $10 for nonmembers, 5:30
Why: The seventy-eighth annual Tony Awards take place Sunday, June 8, at Radio City Music Hall, but you can get a sneak peek at who the winners might be when the prestigious Coffee House Club hosts its popular Tony Awards preview on June 4. Discussing the shows nominated in the major categories will be the inimitable Martha Wade Steketee, the incomparable David Barbour, and me, moderated by the wonderful actor and raconteur Simon Jones. You can read our bios below.

The event begins at 5:30 at the Salmagundi Club and will be followed at 6:30 by “Steve Ross & Friends: Cole Porter, Sung & Unsung,” in which the legendary Crown Prince of New York Cabaret will perform favorite and surprise Porter tunes. Admission is free for members and $10 for guests; everyone is invited to an a la carte dinner afterward to continue the party with advance RSVP.

Simon Jones will moderate Tony Awards preview at the Coffee House Club on June 4 (photo by Conrad Blakemore)

Simon Jones has starred opposite Joan Collins, Lauren Bacall, Rex Harrison, Claudette Colbert, and Angela Lansbury over thirteen productions on Broadway. His most recent appearance was in Trouble in Mind at the Roundabout Theatre in 2021–22. He has recorded more than two hundred audio books. He played King George V in the first Downton Abbey movie, and his other film credits include Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street, Twelve Monkeys, Brazil, and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. In a TV career spanning forty years, he remains well known for his performances as Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Bridey in Brideshead Revisited, and Sir Walter Raleigh in Blackadder, and currently he is one of the stars of The Gilded Age on HBO/MAX, as Bannister the butler. Season three begins June 22.

Martha Wade Steketee is a theater-loving public policy researcher who currently practices in the fields of dramaturgy, criticism, and theater research. She serves as chair of the Drama Desk nominating committee and on several play prize committees, is a member of the Henry Hewes Design Awards Committee and past chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association, and author of the Women Count report series analyzing gender in hiring trends off Broadway since 2010.

David Barbour is editor-in-chief of Lighting & Sound America, which covers design and technology in live entertainment. He is also copresident of the Drama Desk and a member of the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Henry Hewes Design Awards Committee.

Mark Rifkin is a member of the Drama Desk and the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association and has been running the online newsmagazine This Week in New York since 2001, covering art, film, theater, literature, dance, music, food, and anything else that requires someone to leave their apartment in the five boroughs. You can follow his “mad transit” adventures on Substack.