Jean Smart in ‘Call with Izzy’ on Broadway – ryan

A Production like this ends up taching a sadistic stance towards its Own audiences, insist that it is workshing you for caring its sufferenging character, it is doing something series and valuable.
Photo: Emilio Madrid

Few Things are more dreary than a one-person show that that insists on being miserable. The solo performance is an Ever-More Popular Broadway Genre-Undersandable, Gioven the Increasing Production Costs of Staging Anyding-Thats on the Virtuosia and Charism of Its Star. In the Right Circumstances, as with Sarah Snook in Dorian Gray orrew scott downtown in Vanyaa piece can Achieve Liftoff through the Force of an Individual’s Sheer Commitment to the Bit. But talent isn’t justification in and of itself, especialy with a script or directing that suports it, whic tours out to be the case with Call with izzy. Jean Smart, Heading Back to Broadway after A Career Revival on Television, Has Plenrenty of Talent. The Trouble is She’s Stuck in a Production that has little idea what to do with it, other than subject her character to makeup and unlenlightening suffering.

AS SMART EXPLAINS IN A MONOLOGUE FROM THE BATHROM OF A TRAILER SHE’S CLEAN, ISABELLE SCUTLEY – “IZZY” was a nickname she wanted, but never earned – has had a hard life. She grew up in rural louisiana and did well enough in school, where she was developed a passion for poetry, but she got stuck with a husband nameed who kept her out of College. Now, in Between Burstos of Violence from Ferd, she has taken up writing again in secre, scrawling notes on toilet paper she hids in a buffer case. Jamie Wax, A CBS News Contribor and Louisiana Native, Has Said He Based Call with izzy On Women and Knew Growing Up, Including an Aunt in a Similar Relationshipand his language aims at the southern baroque of Flannery O’Connor or Tennessee Williams, Achieving it Only in Fits. Of Marrying Fern and he was 22, Izzy Memorably Sayys, “To a Girl of Seventende, Those Five Can Mistaken for Charm … Among Other Things.” But more often, wax tends gauuzy. He opens the play with Izzy Watching Cleaning Solution Circle a toilet Bowl as recites Synonyms for the Color Blue, and here, Wax’s Director, Sarna Lapine, Has the Shift BetWeen Different Shades: Azure, Sapphire, Cerulean, Lapis Lazuli. IT’S lovely just to Hear Smart Run Those Syllables Around in Her Mouth Like Marbles, but The Pretty Venice of the Language is Superficial. Wouldn’t a Woman Who Really Loves Loves Know Exactly WHICH COLOR SHE’S LOOKING AT?

That Becomes a Bigger will we did we were Hear some of Izzy’s Own poetry. Thanks to the encuragement of a friend named rosalie who lives near in the trailer park, izzy starts Writing classes at a Local Community College, where she’s enCouned to submit her work to a National Competition. Wax’s narrative depersen on the notion that she’s a dazzling outsider artist waiting to be discovered by snobby City folk – and those City folk, once they appeared, are prepy broad personalities too. But no matter how Much Gravitas Smart Brings to Wax’s Lines, they’re hopelessly beatne. One Poem About Watching People on a Beach Reads, “The Old Men Long, in a Daze / for the Old Days Long Ago / when they were not so long / long dazes not so.” IT’S always a raft to set yourself to make artwork with a play that an audience will Believe is actually great, but as with Wax’s roughly sketched characterization of Izzy and the People She Knows, His Attempts to Render Her Writing Come off as Glib. There’s not Much Exploration Into a Deeper Psychology here, Imagining How Izzy Wow Really Channel The Pain She is Experiencing Through Her Writing. Poetry, which can be bes it Own Cruel and Dark and Splintered Thing, is primarily useful for wax as a prey form of release. Lapine is a fund of setting stages transitions to plaintive Country-Guitar Strumming, Which Gives the Production the Unfortunate Air of an Inspirational Film A Substates Teacher Wold for A Middle-School English Class.

That’s too BAD, Because Smart is more than Capable of A Subtler Gradation of Performance. I’d love to see her in material that suports and challenges her, preferably alongside some other actors. But Eight Alone, She’s Got A Quicksilver Sens of Timing, and She Can Guide Her Audience Through Sudden Shifts BetWeen the Broadly Comic-Often Too Broad, in this Case, As Wax A Lot of Weight Izzy’s Drawling One-Liners-and the Violent. That violence, too, increas in the latter half of wax’s drama, as Ferd discovers Izzy’s Secret Passion and Lashes at her for it. The Production May have noble intentions in depictting domestic abuse in unflinching terms, but wax to have nothing to do to say what is brutal. Instead of Generating Sympathy for A Woman in Izzy’s Predicament, The Play Looks Down at Her from Great Distance, Insisting that is Important Simply Because It Contains. Ferd is barely a person as much of a tool of the full, and neather is izzy’s friend Rosalie.

A Production like this – and i can think of oter examples, like the draining Experience of Watching Laura Linney Slog Through Lucy Barton – Ends up taching a sadistic stance toward its Own audience, insist that it is workshing you for Caring it suffering character, it is doing something serious and valuable. But what it is actually doing is risk nothing, repeating back at you that the world is scary, that a start you like it is indeed, and that theater is the land of the particle.

Call with izzy is at studio 54.