Erica Schmidt’s New Work, ‘The Disappear,’ Melds Acerbic Wit With Unabashed Goofiness

At one point in “The Disappear,” a new play by Erica Schmidt, a bestselling novelist named Mira Blair asks her husband, film director Benjamin Braxton, “What’s a better achievement than a long, mutually rewarding marriage?” His response? “Everything! Literally ANYTHING — else!!” He adds, for clarity, “I look at you and I see my death.”Benjamin is, you see, the type who would likely describe himself as a tortured artist, though in truth, it’s those around him who suffer the most — none more than Mira, who despite being more successful, handles the couple’s domestic responsibilities while tolerating her spouse’s vile behavior, which extends from relentlessly baiting and insulting her to pursuing affairs with young actresses.In this twisting, titillating play, however, Benjamin finds himself newly challenged, and not only by Mira. In the script of “Disappear,” Ms. Schmidt has subtitled her play, “A seriocomedy about making art while the world is falling apart.” Over its two acts, she addresses that topic with a combination of acerbic wit and unabashed goofiness, as well as a clear-eyed empathy that’s eventually granted even to Benjamin.Ms. Schmidt, who has won acclaim for her work as both a playwright and a director, serves in both capacities here, and she has enlisted a top-drawer ensemble of stage and screen veterans. Hamish Linklater and Miriam Silverman are respectively cast as Benjamin and Mira, who have holed up in a farmhouse — cozy and rustically stylish in Brett J. Banakis’s scenic design — so that Benjamin can focus on his latest endeavor, which focuses on a writer named Mirabelle who happens to kill herself.Benjamin is certain he has found the perfect actress for the role: Julie Wells, a nubile blonde who waltzes into his house wearing a corset-like top and a straw bonnet. (Jennifer Moeller and Miriam Kelleher designed the diverse, evocative costumes.) Played with artful daftness by a dewy Madeline Brewer, Julie’s the kind of gal who will affect an English accent or reference literary classics to impress a potential colleague.Anna Mirodin, Madeline Brewer, and Hamish Linklater in ‘The Disappear.’ Jeremy Daniel via Audible Theater.But as we soon discover, Julie is no dope. Even after Benjamin’s producer, Michael Bloom — a real Brit played by a typically razor-sharp Dylan Baker — refuses to work with her, she finagles her way into another project, a vehicle Benjamin has crafted for her. It involves a woman who, after her unfaithful husband jokingly wishes her dead, “goes to extreme lengths to hide herself in order to punish him,” as he explains.Unfortunately for Benjamin, he ends up having to work with Mira to see this vision through, and both his art and his life are upended in the process. Ms. Schmidt and Mr. Linklater emphasize from the beginning how childish Benjamin can seem in his self-absorption and arrogance. His pouting and temper tantrums — Mr. Linklater throws himself on the floor on more than one occasion — give way to an even deeper sense of desperation.Ms. Silverman is, relatively speaking, a model of decorum and rationality, even during Mira’s most heated arguments with her husband. As her character grows more liberated, the performance becomes increasingly, infectiously playful, and at the same time more poignant.Kelvin Harrison Jr. is hilarious as Raf Night, the wonderfully named movie idol who becomes Julie’s co-star and, like her, reveals more depth than is implied at first. And Anna Mirodin, as Benjamin and Mira’s environmentally hyper-conscious daughter Dolly, turns in a pitch-perfect portrait of a precocious teenager who is learning to confront family issues with the same sensitivity and concern she feels for the world at large.The thesis of an essay she’s writing for English class, she explains to Raf, is “that no art is worth smashing up real life.” If Ms. Schmidt and most of her characters would seem to agree — a final, chilling twist suggests that one may not — “The Disappear” tackles the demands of both with humor and a sense of purpose.

Erica Schmidt’s New Work, ‘The Disappear,’ Melds Acerbic Wit With Unabashed Goofiness

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