We first see Izzy Scutley, the character Jean Smart is portraying in her first Broadway role in 25 years, in a bathrobe cleaning the toilet in her home in a trailer park in rural Mansfield, Louisiana. It is easy to assume she has nothing in common with Deborah Vance, the wealthy, worldly and well-dressed comedian in the HBO Max series “Hacks,” that has won Smart three Emmys in the last four years.
But Izzy and Deborah do share a gift for words. Early on in this solo show written by Jamie Wax, Izzy tells us she has been writing poetry since the fourth grade, when she was chosen to recite “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer for her school’s Arbor Day Pageant. “I decide right then and there that I am going to be a poet just like Joyce Kilmer,” she says in a North Louisiana country accent. “If she could do it, I could do it. The next day, my teacher informs me that Joyce Kilmer was a man. Well, that figures. But I start writin’ that very day.”
She’s at it now, decades later. But she does it in secret, writing with an eyebrow pencil on a roll of toilet paper, and then hiding her poems in a box of tampons. Izzy’s husband Ferd, whom she married when she was 17, would not approve. It’s not long into the second scene when we realize that Ferd is emotionally and physically abusive.
“Call Me Izzy” offers pockets of humor, and an opportunity for Smart to demonstrate her versatility as an actress. There is even at least one poem that Izzy recites that is worth listening to. But a play that revolves around domestic violence evokes comparison to such seminal dramas as “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and such popular musicals as “The Color Purple” and “Waitress.” This new play, which veers between the predictable and the implausible, adds little to the conversation, and pales beside that canon.
Playwright Jamie Wax, who reports on the arts for CBS News, has said that he based the character of Izzy on his aunt, but that he also interviewed 26 women who were survivors of domestic violence. “Call Me Izzyi” registers his research about the issue; there is even an unlikely scene with a wealthy couple that makes the point that abuse exists among all socioeconomic classes.
Izzy and Ferd shared a lot of laughs when they first got married. But now most of the time Ferd is fed up with his wife, especially with her way with words (“It’s a sickness. It’s a poison in your brain…” ) The ambivalence is mutual, although Izzy is careful not to express it. When Ferd explodes in anger because he can’t find something and blames Izzy for it, she apologizes, and he puts his arm around her in a show of affection. “ I tried to hug him back, but my heart’s not in it. Funny how I can fake an orgasm, but I can’t fake a hug worth shit.”
The incidents escalate.
The opening for an eventual escape begins with a new neighbor, Rosalie, introducing Izzy to the local library and to a free writing class at the local community college. She also sends in some of Izzy’s poems to a poetry magazine contest, with both triumphant and alarming results.
Under the direction of Sarna Lapine, who was last on Broadway helming the 2017 revival of “Sunday in the Park with George” (written by her uncle James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim), “Call Me Izzy” keeps the focus on Smart in a literal way. Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s set design uses projected curtains (much like those in “Maybe Happy Ending”) to keep most of the Studio 54 stage blacked out most of the time, limiting what we see to the immediate space around the actress. This might be a useful metaphor for Izzy’s feeling hemmed in, but it also may make one wonder who thought it a good idea to put such a modest, intimate show in a 1,000-seat Broadway house.
Smart is adept at acting out the scenes involving multiple characters, and meets the challenge of reciting poetry. Here is one of Izzy’s poems, which she tells us was inspired by her reading Shakespeare’s sonnets for the first time:
Sonnet Number One
by Isabelle Scutley
A lightning bug sends flickers through the dark,
Revealing me, a woman, and a wife,
Whose dreaming dropped me in this trailer park.
To serve as sentence others call a life.
Within a coffin made of tin and shit,
I try to speak, although I find no voice,
I try to stand, though I am forced to sit,
And make decisions, though I have no choice.
And so, we flit, the lightning bug and I,
While, as she glimmers, star-like in the black,
I wish on her my man would say good-bye,
And send my floodlight lightnin’ floodin’ back.
An insect doesn’t give me much light,
I know, but that does not suppress her need to glow.
If Jean Smart deserves a better vehicle than “Call Me Izzy” for her return to Broadway, so does that poem.
Call Me Izzy
Studio 54 through August 17, 2025
Running time: 82 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $79 to $399
Written by Jamie Wax
Directed by Sarna Lapine
Scenic design by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams,, lighting design by Donald Holder
costume design by Tom Broecker, sound design by Beth Lake
Cast: Jean Smart
Standby: Johanna Day
