THE UNKNOWN Is A Riveting New Solo Show — Review

Precisely what—or who—is the mysterious Unknown at the heart of David Cale’s mind-scrambling solo work, now making its world premiere in a riveting production at Studio Seaview?

Multiple meanings present themselves. That titular "unknown" refers most obviously to the narrative mystery that drives Cale’s spooky thriller, here staged by Leigh Silverman (Suffs, Yellow Face) and led by multi-hyphenate Sean Hayes, returning to the stage following his Tony Award win for Good Night, Oscar in 2023. The title also refers to the “unknown” actor who is stalking Elliott, our storyteller, for reasons unclear. 

But the true “unknown” at the heart of Cale’s melancholy work is Elliott himself, a detached and near-dissociated writer played with notable restraint by Hayes—-a performer often prone to hamminess. 

The Unknown begins as luxurious red curtains part to reveal Elliott, a gay man in his late 40s, who shares that he is suffering from writer’s block. After setting aside an unproduced musical years earlier, he has been stuck. Unable to start a new project, whether novel, play or screenplay (he does them all), Elliott retreats to his friend Larry’s country home upstate. But it is there, late at night, that yearning lyrics from that musical come floating in through the windows, seeming to whisper from the woods:

I wish you’d wanted me 

How different life would be

I’d love you endlessly 

If you had wanted me

That mournful verse emanates from all sides of the Seaview space, murmuring into our ear in Caroline Eng’s perfectly unnerving sound design. Ghostly lighting by Cha See envelops Hayes in darkness, with only a sliver of light striking through the black. 

The song will follow Elliott back to New York, where events only grow stranger. Clearly, an actor rejected from a workshop of the musical (an “unknown,” not of significance) is the culprit. But the stultified Elliott is more intrigued than frightened, and soon seeks out his stalker, excited by the potential for new material. 

To say more would be spoiling the fun. Suffice to say, Cale expertly keeps up the tension, aided by Silverman’s carefully controlled direction. The playwright does allow himself the occasional sojourn—reflections on historic gay New York, particularly the legendary bar Julius, never find a  totally clear connection with our story. But they do help in adding some atmosphere, a bit of mise-en-scène.

Yet for all the details Elliot provides in unfolding his tale, he offers few about himself. The reasons behind that sketchiness do not become fully clear until the play's end. But Elliott’s enigmaticness ties into a moving central theme, one Cale also explored so beautifully in his previous solo work Blue Cowboy: the tragedy of half-existence, of a person struggling to live as their whole self—unsure, perhaps, of what that whole self would even look like. A walking unknown. 

Cale performed Blue Cowboy himself at The Bushwick Starr last fall, movingly so. The Unknown is written with a strikingly similar affect, or lilt, and one wonders if Cale intended to portray Elliott as well. But Hayes is wholly persuasive, shifting between an array of supporting characters with lightness and ease. And he is steadfastly steely as Elliott, allowing only glimpses behind the carefully cultivated demeanor of a man who can only exist through stories, never as himself. 

Cale’s text ultimately folds in on itself, in a smart if not altogether satisfying coup de théâtre. If the piece is not as emotionally devastating as Blue Cowboy, it still lingers, unnervingly. That unknown voice whispers, softly, of another self lurking the darkness. 

The Unknown is now in performance at Studio Seaview. For tickets and more information, visit here.