"Elliott, a middle-aged playwright stalled by writer's block, retreats to a remote farmhouse owned by friends. On his first night there, he is awakened by a male voice outside singing I Wish You'd Wanted Me, a song he wrote years earlier for a musical. The intrusion unsettles less through noise than through intimacy: his own melody has been turned into something invasive."
"From his claim of being followed, the mystery widens. But the more intriguing question becomes not simply whether Elliott is being stalked, but who, exactly, is doing the following and from what vantage point. Is it a rejected actor nursing a grievance? An identical twin with shifting motives? A projection of Elliott's own loneliness? Or something more overtly theatrical: a character seizing control of the narrative itself?"
"Sean Hayes sheds his familiar theatrical bravura in The Unknown, a short, polished, and curiously slight new solo play by David Cale at Off-Broadway's Studio Seaview. The 75-minute thriller opens with an intriguing premise and a knowingly metatheatrical sensibility, intermittently drawing you in but it never develops enough to justify its abstract title or conceptual ambitions. The play keeps these possibilities in motion, and for a stretch it has real pull."
The Unknown is a 75-minute solo thriller performed Off-Broadway by Sean Hayes. Elliott, a middle-aged playwright with writer's block, retreats to a remote farmhouse and is awakened by a male voice singing a song he once wrote. Back in Manhattan, Elliott finds the song's lyrics taped to his mailbox and begins to suspect a stalker. A flirtatious Texan and an ambiguous twin complicate events as Elliott's drinking and drug-fueled spiral lands him in the hospital. Boundaries between observer and character blur as the mystery widens and the question becomes who is following and from what vantage point. Sharp early scenes yield to an underdeveloped conclusion.
Read at www.amny.com
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