‘The Unknown’ Off Broadway Review: Sean Hayes Raises Goosebumps Being Completely Alone on Stage

Back in the Pleistocene when I was a paying theatergoer, I swore off seeing one-person plays. And I made that vow after having seen two of the best: “The Belle of Amherst” with Julie Harris and “Tru” with Robert Morse. One actor on stage for an entire evening in the theater just didn’t cut it for me.

Which makes the twin achievements of playwright David Cale especially amazing. He wrote the riveting one-person play “Harry Clarke,” in which Billy Crudup mesmerized as a very unreliable narrator. Now comes Cale’s “The Unknown,” starring Sean Hayes, which opened Thursday at Studio Seaview. The narrator here is more than unreliable; he may not exist at all, except as a figment of someone else’s imagination.

Hayes plays a writer named Elliott, who is experiencing severe writer’s block. “The Unknown” gets off to a great start when Elliott accepts the offer of a married couple, Larry and Chloe, to stay in their house in the country. It doesn’t go well from the get-go. In the middle of the night, Elliott finds himself being stalked. Back in New York, he thinks he has met the stalker at the legendary gay bar Julius’, and, against all odds, the two men spend the night together. Later, Elliott meets the stalker’s twin brother.

Stalkers, twins and sex with strangers. Who wouldn’t be hooked? What’s even better is that the play’s creepiest moment comes when Elliott makes a seemingly innocuous confession: He reveals being deeply smitten with his straight friend Larry.

Seeing just one person on stage for 75 minutes cuts it for me here because, in part, that actor is Sean Hayes.

Always a most engaging performer, Hayes in “The Unknown” brings to life at least a dozen characters, seamlessly segueing between them and the narrator, Elliott. He does it all, although under Leigh Silverman’s fast-paced direction, Cha See’s lighting design and Caroline Eng’s sound design emerge as vivid partners.

There’s a lot of great talent on stage, but the unseen star is Cale, a riveting story teller. Laced into the narrative of his thriller are insights into how the creative mind works and how scripts and plays get written. Or not.

Edward Albee came to fame with his two one-act plays “The American Dream” and “The Zoo Story,” which were performed on the same evening. Nowadays, theatergoers want their entertainment to be short. As much as I really don’t like one-person plays, I’d pay to see a double bill of “Harry Clarke” and “The Unknown.”

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