It’s been seven years since Cynthia Nixon has appeared on a New York stage (when she won a Tony for “The Little Foxes”), but that’s not what Jordan Seavey’s new play is about, despite the coincidence of the title – or, at least, we’re led to believe that what “The Seven Year Disappear” Is about is a famous performance artist who disappears for seven years. But the play is so discombobulating — with Nixon portraying eight characters and a jumbled 26-year timeline — that by the end of the play it was hard to be sure what it was about, other than that it was about ninety minutes.
Nixon portrays Miriam, a performance artist whom we are meant to see as so similar to the real-life performance artist Marina Abramović that the first line in the play is Miriam declaring “I am Marina Abramović.” She’s actually mimicking and mocking her rival, because she’s furious than Abramović has just gotten a show at the Whitney that she feels she should have gotten. Her adult son, Napthali (Taylor Trensch), to whom she’s complaining, tries to reassure her:
Napthali: Marina has nothing on you, Ma.
Miriam: well of course you say that – you idolize me
Napthali: What? I do not idolize you…I just believe in your work.
This scene occurs in April 2009. The next scene is in November, 2016, when Miriam appears at Napthali’s sublet apartment in Crown Heights after an absence of more than seven years:
“Happy Thanksgiving,” she says. “If you can call it happy after that election. I know it’s been a while. Are you going to let me in?”
The bulk of the play hopscotches around during the years of her unexplained absence, and focuses on the effect on her son, who is gay, alcoholic and intermittently self-destructive. We see him interacting with (Nixon as) a female private investigator, manicurist, an actress friend, and several male tricks/dates, including an Episcopal bishop, a deceitful associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art…and Wolfgang, Miriam’s artist friend turned manager turned ex-manager turned Napthali’s secret sex partner.
One might hope that the reason one performer is portraying eight roles, rather divvying up the parts to an expanded cast, is connected in some way to the deeper meaning of the play: Perhaps Miriam is so dominant in Napthali’s life that he somehow sees her in every encounter. But the choice could just as easily be chalked up to theatrical bravado and marketing smarts; the publicity around this show has made much of the promise of Cynthia Nixon taking on so many different roles.
If that were what had drawn me to this production, I’d be disappointed. Cynthia Nixon is an undeniably versatile actor; one need no further evidence of this than her performances in current TV roles as the sweet, polite Ada Brook in “The Gilded Age,” and as Miranda Hobbes, who turned from the level-headed (hetereosexual) pragmatist in “Sex and the City” into the ditzy (lesbian) romantic in “And Just Like That.”
But unlike the (misleading) poster for “The Seven Year Disappear,” Nixon doesn’t radically change appearance for each role: No special costumes (she and Trensch wear what look like the uniform of an airport baggage handler), no wigs or makeup, just a change in accent, and sometimes in posture. Some of the characters only appear once, and without some helpful context. The upshot is it’s not always easy to figure out whom she has become.
The confusion in the production seems a trademark approach by the playwright, judging from Seavey’s 2016 “Homos, Or Everyone in America,” which experimented in form, language and design, including a similar deliberately jumbled timeline. But the noodling in that play was more effective than in this one because it felt more justified: The play told the story of six years in the life of a couple (portrayed by Michael Urie and Robin DeJesus, each assigned just one character apiece), and the non-linear order of the scenes seemed to capture the way people might actually remember a relationship.
In that production, the central relationship felt grounded in an emotional reality – not least because of the performances. “The Seven Year Disappear” seems more interested in mystery.
One aspect of the production that does help in clarifying the story is some of its design, in particular the projection of a timeline, which spins before each scene until it lands on the title and specific date for that scene. (“RETURN I: November 23, 2016.”).
The design also leans heavily on real-time videos. This is one of the clues that suggest Seavey and director Scott Elliott are playing with performance art not just as subject but as form. It seems the reason why Nixon and Trensch are sitting on stage like wax figures when the audience member first take our seats before the play begins – an oblique allusion to an Abramovic piece where she sat motionless at MOMA for eight hours. Perhaps the mystery in the show is meant to replicate the experience of attending a work of performance art.
“The Seven Year Disappear” ends with two surprises. One is the most affecting moment in the play. The other…I’m not sure whether it really was the twist it seemed to be.
The Seven Year Disappear
New Group at Signature through March 31
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $72 -$92
Written by Jordan Seavey
Directed by Scott Elliott
Scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Qween Jean, lighting design by Jeff Croiter, sound design by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, projection design by John Narun
Cast: Cynthia Nixon, Taylor Trensch
