A Beloved Actress, Jean Smart, Returns to Broadway, but Taking on ‘Call Me Izzy’ May Not Have Been Her Best Choice

It should be gravy time for Jean Smart. During a career spanning half a century, the beloved actress has earned a bevy of honors, including six Emmy Awards. She collected three of those trophies just in the past few years, for her razor-sharp portrait of a jaded standup comedian and TV host in “Hacks,” an HBO Max series that has made Ms. Smart, at 73, one of the hottest stars in the business. Instead of coasting on her laurels, though, Ms. Smart has decided to return to Broadway, where she last appeared 25 years ago, receiving a Tony nomination for her performance in a revival of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” that also featured Nathan Lane and Harriet Harris, among other luminaries. This time, she is tasked with carrying the production — a new play by Jamie Wax titled “Call Me Izzy” — all by herself, and it’s a burden I wouldn’t wish on anyone.“Izzy” casts Ms. Smart as Isabelle Scutley, who lives with her husband, Ferd, in a trailer park in the small city of Mansfield, Louisiana, in 1989. When Mrs. Scutley first appears — in a blue bathrobe and with a messy mop of curls (the savvy costume and wig design are by Tom Broecker and Richard Martin, respectively), her plain speech bearing a heavy Southern drawl — you wouldn’t necessarily take her for a Shakespeare-loving poet.In fact, though, this heroine has since her youth harbored both a passion and a gift for verse. During the play’s roughly 90 minutes, we learn that her talent was encouraged by a high school teacher who begged her to go to college. Instead, she has been reduced to scribbling her work on toilet paper and hiding it from everybody, save for one sympathetic neighbor.The problem, predictably, is Ferd. It’s divulged early on that Izzy was only 17 when she married him — spurred by her mother’s warnings that she could become an old maid — and that he was never her ideal beau. The ignorant, booze-swilling monster that Izzy’s spouse is gradually shown to be measures up against any redneck caricature I’ve come across; you can practically see him and his beer belly lurching toward his long-suffering wife.Mr. Wax is a Louisiana native, and the character of Izzy was inspired by his aunt, so I’m loath to question the play’s authenticity. And, to be fair, several residents of Mansfield described by Izzy, among them that neighbor and teacher, emerge as less cartoonish and more sympathetic than Ferd; moreover, in detailing a visit from a wealthy New York couple, the playwright carefully dispels the suggestion that abuse is only an issue for hayseeds and the underprivileged.Jean Smart in ‘Call Me Izzy.’ Marc J. FranklinStill, Ferd looms so large in “Izzy,” and is so irredeemably hideous, that I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching a certain kind of non-cosmopolitan person — undereducated, blue collar, perhaps frustrated with that work (or lack of it) — being disparaged. And just as such disparagement hasn’t proved helpful during our present political circumstances, it doesn’t make for especially compelling, or cathartic, drama. Under Sarna Lapine’s direction, in fact, Ms. Smart seems curiously small and dim, as if she’s as oppressed by the material as Izzy is by her predicament. It doesn’t help that other aspects of Mr. Wax’s script can challenge our ability to suspend disbelief: When a Jewish man and woman arrive at Izzy and Ferd’s mobile home for dinner, for instance, they apparently expect a kosher meal.None of this prevented the audience at a recent preview from greeting Ms. Smart’s curtain call with a rapturous standing ovation — as Broadway audiences are inclined to do, particularly when a celebrated actor is involved. Yet I couldn’t help suspecting that applause was also informed by a touch of self-congratulation, for having seen a less fortunate woman through her ordeal. Because in the end, “Call Me Izzy” inspires pity more than empathy — and the latter not only feels better, but is always more useful.

A Beloved Actress, Jean Smart, Returns to Broadway, but Taking on ‘Call Me Izzy’ May Not Have Been Her Best Choice

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