"There's a refrain that follows Sean Hayes around in The Unknown, and it doesn't take much to hear echoes of The Phantom of the Opera in the way the playwright David Cale has arranged its scansion and melody. "I wish you'd wanted me," Hayes's character, Elliott, a playwright who's on a digital-detox retreat upstate, hears a mysterious voice singing somewhere outside his window."
""How different life would be / I'd love you endlessly / If you had wanted me." The song is prerecorded, and it sounds a lot like Hayes is singing it. He's the only actor onstage and remains so for the entire play, keeping us rooted in a tale narrated from Elliott's perspective, even as Hayes adopts the mannerisms of the many other figures he describes."
The Unknown follows Elliott, a playwright who retreats upstate for a digital detox and hears a prerecorded, mysterious song outside his window. The refrain echoes operatic melodrama and seems sung by him, heightening questions about authorship and reality. After returning to New York, Elliott has a fleeting encounter at a gay bar with a Texan who leaves song lyrics written on Elliott's body and then vanishes. Elliott's attempts to track the man reveal possible ties to an earlier audition, a twin brother, and a troubled past, while Elliott's drinking and shaky reliability leave every revelation uncertain.
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