The theater can be like a campfire from childhood, a place where you gather in the darkness to listen to a story about things that go bump in the night. David Cale’s The Unknown makes the most of the medium with a twisty, goosebump-inducing one-man thriller that dwells in the shadows of modern city life.
Sean Hayes stars as a creatively stuck middle-aged New York writer who discovers he’s being stalked by an actor whom he rejected for a role in one of his plays. Fans of the former Will & Grace star may be surprised by the both the depth of his performance as well as the breadth. The actor plays not only the writer, Elliott, but also roughly a dozen other characters, including the actor, his brothers, a straight couple who keeps urging him to act sensibly (and alert the police), and an older British couple who ply him with booze and drugs after picking him up in a bar.
Cale, who played with similar themes of double lives in his 2017 solo play Harry Clarke, masterfully lulls us into the bizarre situation and the plausible but self-defeating way that Elliott responds to it. Director Leigh Silverman gooses the suspense with a physical production that reveals new surprises as the story progresses, from Studio Bent’s seemingly ordinary set design to Cha See’s cinematic lighting to Caroline Eng’s sound design that re-creates Elliott’s discomfort when his stalker’s singing seems to coming from all around us in the theater.
Hayes is captivating throughout, maintaining our sympathy even as his reliability as a narrator dissipates into mere wisps. He’s such a charmer, though, that we’ll gladly follow him anywhere — and he leads us into the darkness of The Unknown with unerring confidence and skill. ★★★★★
THE UNKNOWN
Studio Seaview, Off Broadway
Running time: 80 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through April 12 for $99 to $349