Theatre in Review: The Seven Year Disappear (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)

	Cynthia Nixon, Taylor Trensch. Photo: Monique Carboni

Given the popularity of the characters she plays in the series And Just Like That... and The Gilded Age, it's easy to forget Cynthia Nixon's astonishing versatility. Only a few seasons ago, she confidently shuttled between wildly opposed characters in a revival of The Little Foxes: One night she was the grasping, ice-cold anti-heroine Regina; the next she was Birdie, Regina's fragile, alcoholic sister-in-law. It's a feat that few of her peers could pull off. But one would expect nothing less of an actress who, as a teenager, made her Broadway debut in concurrent productions of David Rabe's Hurlyburly and Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. Even on television just now, she is busy playing disparate women of two centuries. Clearly, a single role isn't enough to contain her talent at any one time.

At The New Group, she is taking on an even bigger challenge: Navigating the mazelike structure of The Seven Year Disappear -- a play about the most questionable maternal decision since Medea volunteered to put the little ones down for the night -- she brings to life an astonishingly varied gallery of characters. They include Wolfgang, a world-weary, switch-hitting German gallerist with a taste for outré and dangerous sexual practices; Brayden, an assistant curator at MOMA on the romantic hunt for guys who are "complicated" and "handfuls;" Kaitlyn, a cagey high-school art student who allows she might be gay but would rather not talk about it; and Michael, a depraved Episcopal bishop hooked on meth and compliant young men.

Most crucially, she plays Miriam, a ferociously ambitious conceptual artist and an endless source of agita for her son/manager Napthali. In the amusing opening scene, we get a sense of her self-aggrandizing ways, beginning with her wicked imitation of Marina Abramovic, her chief frenemy. ("She's such a fucking hypocrite," she adds. "I mean, I love Marina.") Horrified to hear that her rival, who holds a coveted place at the Museum of Modern Art, might be treading on her turf, she growls, "The Whitney is mine!" like a tiger guarding a hard-won piece of meat. Soon, however, she is over the moon to learn that MOMA will offer her a major commission, wangled for her by Napthali.

Then she vanishes. For seven years.

Most of The Seven Year Disappear tracks Napthali's downward spiral in his mother's absence. Fleeing the intrigue-filled art world and seeking a strong maternal substitute, he signs onto Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, putting him on the road to further heartbreak. To assuage his pain, he sleeps, off and on, with Wolfgang, his mother's ex, a textbook Freud arrangement too obvious for comment. Rebelling against Miriam's frequently iterated worries about his sobriety and sexual health, he drinks, does drugs, and flirts with HIV infection. If the latter choice makes you want to throw something, it's consistent with his character: In his thirties, Napthali is incapable of making a choice that isn't, one way or another, the act of a rebellious child, one willing to damage himself for attention.

The playwright Jordan Seavey is a real talent, however, so each of Napthali's encounters with the abovementioned characters and others are trenchant sketches, each given an undertone of tension thanks to the young's man itchy, ever-present self-loathing. Seavey is also good at suggesting the sour hangover atmosphere following Clinton's electoral defeat and the horror felt in the gay community over the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. But Napthali is dogged by the suspicion that his mother's disappearance is her latest performance piece, which is confirmed when she returns, announcing that they will participate in a stage reunion at MOMA in which they will tell each other everything that happened during their years of separation. (This is not a spoiler, by the way; because Seavey's script jumps back and forth in time, this news is delivered relatively early.)

Thus, Seavey wants you to believe that Miriam, a minor celebrity, could drop off the face of the earth for the better part of a decade, hiding out who knows where and doing God knows what. (The playwright tries to cover himself by introducing a private detective who notes the difficulty of such an endeavor, adding that it would be seriously illegal if Miriam futzed with her passport.) We are also expected to believe that a controlling mother, endlessly worried about her fragile son's mental and physical health, would abandon him, leaving him jobless and without access to her bank account. (Then again, much of this withholding behavior is par for the course, considering that Miriam has long refused to divulge the identity of Napthali's father. "That subject is off-limits," she says. "It's private.")

However unbelievable this twist is, it does set up an amusing mother-and-son battle. Miriam, infuriated that Naphtali isn't thrilled to take part in her project's grand finale, assumes the mantle of unloved parent, snapping, "Only you could be bar mitzvah-ed at the Venice Biennial and find a way to complain about it." When he grumbles about a childhood spent being featured in her projects, she replies, witheringly, "You do know there are worse things than being immortalized in seminal, genre-defying, era-defining art?"

But that's The Seven Year Disappear for you, a piece of cubist dramatic construction filled with intriguing pieces that don't somehow combine to make a satisfying portrait. Despite its political backdrop and fancy art-world observations, it boils down to the old saw about gay men being dominated by their mothers. It's not for nothing that everyone in Napthali's world is portrayed by the actress playing his mother.

It's a good thing that the director Scott Elliott found his Napthali in Taylor Trensch, an actor who can go toe-to-toe with the formidable Nixon; it's not easy to keep an audience interested in a rudderless ship like Napthali, but Trensch manages it handily, pushing back with gusto in the big mother-son confrontations. Elliott has also overseen a production design so uncommonly slick it could be an installation by Miriam. Derek McLane's abstract scenic design is a landscape of chairs, mics, and video screens; John Narun uses the latter to project images of the plot's timeline, allowing us to keep track as the action hopscotches across the years. (Narun also delivers stylized images of the characters, their faces broken up over several screens, a nod both to their psychological dislocations and the play's fragmented time frame.) Jeff Croiter's lighting is sleek and often flat-out gorgeous, carving the actors out of the darkness with unusual skill. Sound designers Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen use mics on the actors to create different levels of stylization. Qween Jean dresses the cast in jumpsuits, a one-size-fits-all solution for a script structured like a screenplay. Overall, it's a fine case of a design eminently suited to the play.

In many cases, a play founded on such an outrageously false premise would be easy to avoid. But there's something weirdly compelling about Miriam and Napthali's bizarre relationship and, scene by scene, The Seven Year Disappears has its fascinations. Then again, the final scene is all too typical: Seemingly stepping out of the action -- or are we at MOMA, for Miriam's performance? -- Miriam gives Napthali a new final scene for a cold read. It recounts Miriam's first encounter with Wolfgang (a role taken by Napthali) and it answers all the pressing questions that have haunted the young man. It almost seems like a benediction, until you realize her behavior contradicts everything Miriam has done previously. Will the real Miriam please stand up? Probably not. --David Barbour