Lauren Ambrose may be best known for playing rebellious daughter Claire in the early-aughts HBO drama Six Feet Under, but she’s made a distinguished career for herself on the New York stage in the decades since, playing everyone from the tart-tongued Hennie in Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! to Juliet Capulet to Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Nick Payne’s The Unbelievers, now playing at Manhattan Theatre Club’s subterranean Stage 1 at New York City Center, provides the actress with one of her meatiest roles yet.
Miriam Wright is a flame-haired dynamo of a woman, a teacher and mother of three whose combustible personality has already chased away two husbands and threatens to alienate her from her children. Her intensity kicks into even higher gear when her youngest child, a boy named Oscar just shy of his 16th birthday, goes missing while ostensibly on the way to school. Here at last is a worthy outlet for Miriam’s drivenness — and her single-minded pursuit of clues about her son consumes her every waking thought.
Payne, best known for his philosophical two-hander Constellations, takes a similar nonlinear approach to the story, jumping at random from the day of the disappearance to one year later to seven years later — as the script dictates, with “no blackouts, no scene changes and no transitions.” (The show runs a long two hours, without intermission.) The audience, some of whom are seated in pew-like benches on the stage in Paul Steinberg’s spare set design, can feel as discombobulated as the family trying to piece together where they are in time.
The one constant is Ambrose’s Miriam, who maintains as determined in from her first meeting with police detectives as she does seven years later, when Oscar’s father (Tom Riley) and her grown daughters (Nina Ross and Elizabeth Yeoman) begin to plan a memorial event. Unlike her, they seek some sort of closure on a loss that feels less raw to them with the passage of time. Miriam is having none of it, and she lashes out with the intensity of Medea in reverse — unwilling to contemplate even the possibility that her Oscar might not be out there, somewhere.
If he is alive, you can see why he might have run away and gone no-contact. Mom can be a sharp-tongued harpie, lashing out at strangers and loved ones, and his dad is a drip. Mom’s first husband (Hadi Tabbal), the father of lesbian eldest daughter Nancy, is an Anglican priest who overshares about his post-divorce sex life and seems to exist here primarily to introduce concepts of faith that Miriam quickly rejects. (It’s not clear why she married either man.) No wonder middle child Margaret gets engaged to a milquetoast academic named Benjamin (Jack DiFalco), whose amusingly wordy disquisition on his research into puffins prompts another Miriam outburst: “Oh my god Jesus fucking Christ enough… I’m gonna open a fucking vein if I have to listen to any more.” You’ll be inclined to agree with her, but she’s not one for maintaining social niceties. She just has no chill.
Director Knud Adams strikes a nice balance between moments of levity and weightier conflict, including a climactic scene where Miriam is confronted by her loved ones about her decision to skip the memorial to chase a dubious lead abroad. It’s a showcase moment, and Ambrose embraces her character’s doggedness, devotion, and delusion with mesmerizing passion. But it also doesn’t quite ring true — especially the muted way that her family responds to this latest outburst. While The Unbelievers proves unconvincing as a domestic drama, it offers a riveting character study of a woman who responds to an unthinkable situation in the only way she knows how, all others be damned. ★★★☆☆
THE UNBELIEVERS
MTC at New York City Center, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 29 for $79 to $109