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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/12\/theater\/the-unknown-review-sean-hayes.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20260213&instance_id=171041&nl=the-morning&regi_id=122976029&segment_id=215219&user_id=b25c5730c89e0c73f75709d8f1254337",
    "parsed_content": "AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u2018The Unknown\u2019 Review: Sean Hayes Turns One Man Into a MysteryThe chameleonic actor takes on several characters in David Cale\u2019s solo play about a writer in pursuit of his stalker. Or is it all in his mind?Listen to this article \u00b7 4:47 min Learn moreShare full articleSean Hayes in \u201cThe Unknown\u201d at Studio Seaview in Manhattan. Credit...Sara Krulwich\/The New York TimesBy Helen ShawFeb. 12, 2026The UnknownNarrators are inherently tricky figures. There\u2019s something furtive and insinuating about them, especially when they speak in the first person. What if the narrator starts lying? Is the narrator-self consistently one self? Surrealist detective fiction excels at exploiting this M\u00f6bius-strip confusion \u2014 an investigator might go looking for a murderer, say, only to find out that he\u2019s the one who dunnit.Last century was full of such metaphysical sleuthery, from G.K. Chesterton (\u201cThe Man Who Was Thursday\u201d) to Eugene Ionesco (\u201cThe Killer\u201d) to Geoff Dyer (\u201cThe Search\u201d). That might be why David Cale\u2019s slippery new monologue, \u201cThe Unknown,\u201d performed by Sean Hayes at Studio Seaview, feels timeless \u2014 we have seen this story\u2019s end in its beginning.A red curtain swishes aside to reveal an unadorned stage. Hayes is discovered in profile, wearing a slouchy blue jacket, with his hand to his forehead. Voil\u00e0! A writer, exhausted. Hayes, for the most part, speaks as Elliott, a journeyman playwright and screenwriter with a shrug in his voice. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen writers talk about having writer\u2019s block, I always rolled my eyes. But I was having trouble writing.\u201dIn Elliott\u2019s tale, friends offer him a remote upstate writing retreat, but on his first night, he hears a man outside, a mysterious intruder singing a song from one of Elliott\u2019s own musicals. \u201cI wish you\u2019d wanted me,\u201d a male voice croons, flitting across the theater, sometimes settling uncomfortably close to my left ear. This sleight-of-sound (designed by Caroline Eng, with music composed by Isobel Waller-Bridge) operates as our warning that Elliott\u2019s world is ours: It\u2019s going to worm its way in, delusion or not.Elliott flees back to New York, but the more he evades this stalker, the more he finds him. At his local New York drinking spot, the 162-year-old gay bar Julius\u2019, a sweet-natured Texan strikes up a conversation; it would rouse anyone\u2019s suspicions \u2026 other than a writer hungry for content and contact. Hayes\u2019s chameleonic voice drawls and swings as writer and stranger seduce each other, and Elliott eventually finds that phrase \u2014 \u201cI wish you\u2019d wanted me\u201d \u2014 written in surprising places. Men turn out to be other men, or turn out to be twins, or turn out to be characters from other plays, as Elliott pursues his suitor-tormentor across the city. He chases him long enough that the pursuit makes him, paradoxically, a kind of predator.The director Leigh Silverman treats the set (designed by Studio Bent) like a noir soundstage, filling it with hard-edge shadows (Cha See designed the lights) and banks of fog-like smoke. The primary quality, though, is sound. \u201cThe Unknown\u201d is hypnotic, which is another way of saying that its pleasures are very quiet ones. I felt like I was listening to radio drama on a rainy night, or as if someone were reading me a familiar story, but I\u2019d forgotten the ending. Waller-Bridge\u2019s dreamy music sounds as though it\u2019s coming from another room, and it\u2019s only when Cale deploys certain haptic details \u2014 Hayes describes the spare keys to Elliott\u2019s apartment, stuck with a magnet to his fridge \u2014 that the evening takes on momentary weight.Hayes takes to this material as if it were written for him. He\u2019s vocally flexible, playing several characters, but he also has an intriguing way of gradating warmth, so that we ignore Elliott\u2019s poor choices (and spiraling sanity) for longer than we should. Here he\u2019s also doing a sly imitation of Cale, a writer-actor who often performs his pieces himself.There\u2019s an interrogative lilt that I associate with Cale, who played a different \u2014 I assume? \u2014 writer in his recent solo \u201cBlue Cowboy,\u201d at the Bushwick Starr. In that monologue, which shared many characteristics with \u201cThe Unknown,\u201d the writer\u2019s quest for a retreat led him up into the Idaho hills, where a sad-eyed cowpoke slid into his life and bed. Hayes-as-Elliott strikes the same note of diffidence that Cale did when men show erotic interest; his extreme self-effacement can be both a little shy and a little much.How much this coyness intrigued me and how much it annoyed me shifted, a bit like Silverman\u2019s drifting sheets of fog. The show is not long, but even in just 75 minutes, I had time to feel as though my own mental pursuit of Elliott occasionally wore thin, and that mystification was not, always, the same as profundity. Are these waters deep? Or are they just dark? Those thoughts surfaced, rather like one of Waller-Bridge\u2019s elusive melodies.Still, Hayes always summoned me back into Elliott\u2019s whirlpool mind. \u201cI wish you wanted me,\u201d he says, describing, elliptically, the way that the storyteller and his audience yearn for each other. Which I? Which me? While I was busy thinking about that, I felt us all go down into the vortex together.The UnknownThrough April 12 at the Studio Seaview, Manhattan; studioseaview.com. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes.See more on: Sean HayesShare full articleRelated ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "ai_headline": "\u2018The Unknown\u2019 Review: Sean Hayes Turns One Man Into a Mystery",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Sean Hayes Performs The Unknown Play Review",
    "ai_excerpt": "Sean Hayes stars in David Cale's solo play 'The Unknown,' a story about a writer pursued by a stalker. The review explores the play's themes of identity, reality, and the blurring lines between the narrator and the audience. The reviewer analyzes Hayes' performance and the play's overall impact.",
    "ai_subject_tags": [
        "Theater Review",
        "Performance Art",
        "Sean Hayes",
        "David Cale",
        "The Unknown",
        "Solo Play",
        "Mystery",
        "Drama"
    ],
    "ai_context_type": "Review",
    "ai_context_details": {
        "tone": "analytical",
        "perspective": "critical",
        "audience": "general",
        "credibility_indicators": []
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