Erica Schmidt has packed her new play The Disappear with many promising elements, including some sharp insights into a middle-aged narcissist who’s earned a dubious reputation as a creative genius and been coddled for years as a result. Benjamin Braxton (Hamish Linklater) is a fillmmaker with a respectable list of mostly indie credits, a producer (Dylan Baker) who bends over backwards to stroke his sizable but fragile ego, and a longtime wife, Mira (Miriam Silverman, delightfully wry), whose keen intelligence is overshadowed by her frankly implausible forbearance. “I have no head for trivial things,” Ben tells his Mira early on while trying to shirk some domestic chore, “and you’re so very good at it.”
Never mind that Mira is a bestselling novelist who’s achieved considerably more success in her creative endeavors than her husband — and who still assumes the bulk of the cooking, cleaning, and carpooling of their carbon-footprint-obsessed teenage daughter (Anna Mirodin) around the rustic country home that Benjamin inherited from his mom (designed with wood-paneled old-money care by Brett J. Banakis).
Mira also has to endure her husband clumsily seducing a twentysomething actress, Julie (Madeline Brewer), the sort of striver who puts on a faux British accent for a professional meeting while wearing a flowing peasant dress and a ribbon-bedecked straw bonnet straight out of Little House on the Prairie (costumes by Jennifer Moeller and Miriam Kelleher). So desperate is the man for validation that he impulsively declares Julie his muse while promising her the lead in his next film — even after he lures a genuine movie star (Kelvin Harrison Jr., a billboard-worthy charmer) as the male lead.
When that Hollywood hunk shows more interest in meeting Mira than Benjamin — he’s a big fan of her books and knows them better than her husband does — The Disappear primes us for a potential screwball spouse-swapping roundelay in the Noel Coward tradition. But Schmidt seems uncertain as to whether she’s writing a comedy or a tragedy, a problem that’s exacerbated by her decision to direct the show herself. The tone shifts suddenly from scene to scene, and sometimes within a single speech, and you can hear the gears grinding the machinery of the story. Worse, the comic elements are played so broadly — more than once, Linklater hurls himself to the carpet like a tantrum-throwing toddler — that it’s hard to appreciate when the action moves into a more serious mode.
While Benjamin seems oblivious to how much of a cliché he’s become, the audience is all too aware. Oddly, Schmidt’s female characters are no more fleshed out. Brewer’s ingenue is more quirky than plausible, while Silverman’s Mira remains a cypher. What did she ever see in Benjamin in the first place? Why has she stayed with him for so long? We keep hearing about his supposed genius, but we never see much evidence of it. The man’s a jerk, and so it’s hard to drum up much sympathy when his family and young lover finally come to their senses. The audience for The Disappear will have checked out long before the final blackout. ★★☆☆☆
THE DISAPPEAR
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through March 15 for $45 to $130
Culture Sauce 