The Disappear: Fun While It Lasts

By Frank Scheck

★★★☆☆ Hamish Linklater, Miriam Silverman, and Dylan Baker are among the many stars of Erica Schmidt’s world premiere play riffing on present enterprise and marriage

It’s irritating attempting to get a deal with on the brand new play by Erica Schmidt on the Minetta Lane Theatre. And there’s good cause for that: the playwright doesn’t appear to a deal with on it herself. The work offers with severe themes, virtually greater than it may deal with, whereas trying to be the kind of broad comedy that Charles Busch may provide you with. Not a lot of it is sensible, both narratively or thematically, but it surely’s loads of enjoyable alongside the way in which because of the intelligent writing and terrific performances. You may as properly benefit from the experience of The Disappear, now receiving its world premiere from Audible, as a result of it’s more likely to rapidly disappear out of your reminiscence.

[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]

Schmidt (Cyrano, All the Fine Boys), who additionally directed, has assembled a top-flight forged for the manufacturing, isn’t stunning as a result of it options the kind of juicy comedian roles that actors crave. It’s set in an outdated Upstate New York farmhouse (superbly designed by Brett J. Banakis), the house of self-important, emotionally tortured filmmaker Benjamin (Hamish Linklater); his confident, extremely profitable novelist spouse, Mira (a radiant Mirian Silverman); and their local weather change-obsessed teen daughter, Dolly (Anna Mirodin).

Benjamin, whose profession hasn’t gone properly recently, is struggling to complete the screenplay for his upcoming horror movie. Actually, his “elevated” horror movie, since he’s pretentious sufficient to explain his aspiration as “Artaud meets Poe.” When a gorgeous, quirky younger actress, Julie (Madeline Brewer, The Handmaid’s Tale), arrives to audition for the lead position, Benjamin, who’s deeply sad in his marriage, turns into instantly besotted. Complications, evidently, ensue.

“She’s my muse,” he declares to his skeptical British producer Michael (Dylan Baker, having loads of enjoyable within the position), who tells Benjamin that the casting is unimaginable. That doesn’t cease Benjamin from arising with a brand new undertaking for his object of adoration, one primarily based on Dido and Aeneas no much less, whereas concurrently blowing aside his marriage. And he’s not refined in regards to the latter: “I look at you and I see my death,” he tells his bewildered spouse.

It’s not lengthy, nevertheless, earlier than Mira finds a romantic distraction of her personal within the type of good-looking younger film star Raf (Kelvin Harrison Jr., of the movies Luce and The Photograph), whom Michael has proudly recruited for Bejamin’s movie. Raf, charismatic however emotionally troubled, isn’t actually aware of Benjamin’s work, however he’s a lifelong fan of Mira’s novels. Much to Benjamin’s consternation, he insists that he’ll solely do the undertaking if Mira writes the script.

The sophisticated proceedings are by no means actually plausible, taking part in extra like a sexed-up Kaufman and Hart backstage farce than a contemporary portrait of present enterprise and marriage. To its credit score, The Disappear — whose indirect title refers to a plot component in Benjamin’s new undertaking, which sounds suspiciously like Gone Girl — is filled with lacerating, usually very amusing observations about each topics, with Schmidt’s witty one-liners delivered in skilled trend by the top-flight forged. But it suffers from a bitter style, particularly since its lead character Benjamin is proven as silly, self-absorbed, and unlikeable. The undeniable fact that he’s usually very humorous, and will get a dramatic comeuppance on the play’s finish (which doesn’t tonally match with the remainder of the night), doesn’t make spending greater than two hours with him nice.

The playwright by no means appears to discover a coherent tone, and even theme, for the play, which she phases with the kind of self-indulgence demonstrated by so many writers directing their very own work. That’s to not say that The Disappear isn’t principally entertaining, however reasonably that its entire is lower than the sum of its elements.

The Disappear opened January 15, 2026, on the Minetta Lane Theatre and runs via February 22. Tickets and knowledge: audible.com