THE DISAPPEAR Puts The Manchild Front and Center

As two youthful, snarky theater fans first discovering the idiosyncrasies of the New York landscape, myself and a comedian friend used to dream of staging a parody at the People’s Improv Theatre titled, “The Assembled Parties Gather at the Country Cottage Lakeside Family Home.” Or, something along those lines. (Okay, the title needed work.)

Set at a lakeside cottage in the country, our magnum opus would have featured multiple overlapping family reunions, all fraught with tensions as secrets rose concurrently to the surface, each interrupted only by roof pieces occasionally crashing down onto the nonplussed, tidily-dressed relatives. (“This place is falling apart!” a passing Blythe Danner would occasionally declare, before scuttling back off stage.) 

The idea might sound mean-spirited, but in truth, me and my co-writer loved nothing more than a good country-home-fracas drama—particularly the finest Manhattan Theatre Club vintage. Sure, we feared the milquetoast family drama’s role in the dearth of formally ambitious work on Broadway. But all things being well-balanced, can’t there be room for both? To this day, I still love a good second-home-showdown. 

So I certainly enjoyed decent chunks of The Disappear, Erica Schmidt’s routine if energetic entry into the country house canon. Now at the Minetta Lane Theatre through February 22 in an Audible production, Schmidt’s new work (which she also directs) concerns an egotistical filmmaker, Benjamin Braxton (Hamish Linklater), blowing up a longtime marriage to celebrated novelist Mira Blair (Miriam Silverman) with his pursuit of hot young star Julie Wells (Madeline Brewer). Even as their relationship crumbles, Ben and Mira are forced to work together after Benjamin’s lead actor Raf Night (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) takes a liking to Mira. 

The Disappear kicks off with Benjamin hurling misanthropic, misogynistic abuse at his poor wife—”I look at you and I see my death,” is one choice line—and stays in that lane for much of the ensuing two hour runtime. Linklater is a faultlessly committed actor, and does not shy away from his character’s cruelty. (Halley Feiffer’s stinging drama The Pain of My Belligerence utilized Linklater similarly back in 2019, if to more intriguing ends.) Linklater is also unfailingly charismatic, and in a handful of tantalizing moments, his Benjamin starts to convince—if only for a few seconds—that Mira is somehow the real problem in this dynamic. Still, the role is beneath Linklater, as Benjamin ultimately has no depths to plumb. He is a manchild, and that’s all. 

As his novelist wife, Silverman feels similarly overqualified for the gig. She mostly plays Mira as a wet rag, hapless and weak—that’s what Schmidt wrote, and it’s clearly what she wants from Silverman. It’s also quite uninteresting. 

The supporting players fare better. Dylan Baker, always reliable, hams it up delightfully as Benjamin’s put upon agent. Brewer is highly enjoyable as Julie, finding a wackiness that livens up the proceedings (the young starlet keeps slipping in and out of a fake British accent, a fun touch). And the underrated Kelvin Harrison Jr. has presence to spare as Raf, who is amusingly irritated by Benjamin and his “tortured genius” routine. 

Schmidt moves the action along briskly, but aside from little touches here and there, The Disappear never surprises. You keep waiting for the text to pull us in some unexpected direction—surely an off-beat artist like Schmidt wouldn’t write a stock country-house-fracas, just two hours of rich people yelling about nothing? But she has, reawakening my wilted dreams of ham-fisted theatrical satire in the process. Does The PIT have any openings coming up?

The Disappear is now in performance at Audible's Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.