Cynthia Nixon is magnificent in The New Group’s Off-Broadway world premiere production of Jordan Seavey’s intriguingly meta play The Seven Year Disappear running at The Pershing Square Signature Center through March 31st.
Outside the Signature’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, there is an overview of the career of fictional mononymous performance artist Miriam (Nixon). The description does not mention Seavey’s play or Nixon, and looks like something that one would encounter at the entrance to an art exhibition. When the house opens, Miriam is already seated on stage looking directly at another person sat opposite her in a way that is reminiscent of “The Artist Is Present” by one of Miriam’s contemporaries, Marina Abramović, who is referenced early on. When the play begins, we discover that the other seated figure is Miriam’s business partner—and twenty-something son—Naphtali (an excellent Taylor Trensch).
Naphtali has some exciting news for his dejected and cash-strapped mother. MoMA wants to commission her to create new work, but just as this is announced at a MoMA donor event in 2009, Miriam disappears without a trace, only to return on Thanksgiving 2016, seven years and seven months later. When she unexpectedly turns up at the door of her son’s Brooklyn apartment, she refuses to give any answers. Instead, she urges Naphtali to join her at MoMA to discuss her long, unexplained absence, thereby creating her new piece. “There’s no other way to find out why I left and where I’ve been and what I’ve done”, she tells him without compromise.
This is far from the first time that Miriam has involved her son in her work, which he has come to resent, complaining that even his birth was “a performance piece”, as was his bar mitzvah at the Venice Biennale. He goes on to complain that he still has the metal pins in his leg to show for her “shark piece”. “There are worse things than being immortalized in seminal, genre-defying, era-defining art”, Miriam retorts. But it seems that being the focus of some of his mother’s most famous work has left him feeling manipulated by her, rudderless, and searching for an identity of his own.
At one point, Naphtali describes an early memory of being lost as a child at the Bronx Zoo as night began to fall and the lions started to roar. Similar feelings are stirred again when he is abandoned as an adult. Much of the play unfolds in reverse chronology, taking us back through Naphtali’s life in New York over the years that his mother is missing, with Nixon deftly taking on the roles of an array of characters whom he encounters. As Naphtali puts it to her when she eventually returns, “you were still in my life for seven years”. She might have been absent, but she was somehow still omnipresent. Not only is every other character played by the same actress, but nearly all of them have some kind of connection to Miriam.
The character who recurs most frequently is German gallerist and art collector Wolfgang. Having grown up with an unconventional artist mother, and knowing nothing about his father, Wolfgang is the closest thing to a paternal figure in Naphtali’s life. But that relationship has also become complicated. “Mother’s ex-lover-slash-manager whom I fuck and fist periodically” as Naphtali describes him.
The horror of the Pulse nightclub massacre lingers in the air in a spiky scene with Thomás, Naphtali’s boyfriend during the run up to 2016 election. He is a DACA DREAMer “Bernie Bro” who has reluctantly found himself working on social media for the eventual Democratic Presidential candidate. Cynical about queer assimilation, especially in the wake of Pulse, Thomás deridingly refers to Naphatali’s position as “Hillary’s queer eye on the campaign guy”. Hillary is apparently an admirer of Miriam’s, and it seems that Naphtali only landed the job so she could get feedback on her debates from someone who has been in close proximity to a performance artist. Thomás mocks Naphtali’s relationship with Hillary, saying that the “lines blur” between him seeing her as a mother figure and his boss.
As the years roll back, there is also an awkward blind date with SoulCycler Brayden at a gay bar; an overdue catchup with his self-involved, in-demand television actress friend Aviva; a consultation with a private investigator, Nicole; and a manicure appointment with LaGuardia high school senior, Kaitlyn, at the salon that he used to go to with his mother as a child. The teen turns out to be a Reddit “Miriam Truther”, who opens up to Naphtali about her sexuality as she paints his nails “Millennial Pink”. Nixon really convinces as all of these characters, bringing subtle but effective vocal and physical distinctions to each, aided by some some visual indications like a nosering, baseball cap, and glasses as she makes the transformation from one to the next.
There is plenty of humour throughout, some of which gets pretty dark, such in a brooding, unsettling scene (and one of the play’s most gripping) that sees Naphtali doing drugs with a Steel Magnolias-referencing, horny dom Episcopal bishop at a hookup app orgy. It is a crowning achievement by Nixon, who brings some creepy charisma, playfulness, and a touch menace to the character.
Being a mother clearly does not come naturally to Miriam, but she does try to nurture in her own way. She buys Naphtali a Brita filter in 2009 (which she expects him to still have in 2016), and encourages him to have safe sex and to stay on the wagon. When he tells her that he has some news, she immediately fears that he is HIV positive, saying that it is something that “every mother of every gay son waits in worry” about hearing in an awkwardly funny exchange.
With recurring references, HIV/AIDS looms over the play. There is a scene set at the height of the crisis in 1990, then decades later bug chasing is touched upon, and at one point Naphtali describes a work by one of the “Gay Greats” he admires, artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz’s One Day This Kid. As Naphtali seeks to discover himself and wrestles with his self-destructive tendencies to turn to drink and drugs, he also attempts to navigate gay sex as someone who came of age in the aftermath of the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Derek McLane’s set design, Jeff Croiter’s lighting, and John Narun projections (sometimes giant stills of Naphtali and Miriam in previous performance pieces, sometimes a live video feed) all contribute to staging that feels like a sleek museum art installation. While Qween Jean’s costumes are fashionista black boiler suits that scream NYC art world, but are neutral enough for the actors to wear throughout as they shift through time, different scenarios, and characters in Nixon’s case. Scott Elliott’s crisp direction keeps things well-paced and dynamic by setting each scene in a distinct location, using the entire space, including the uppermost upstage areas at times, when we focus more on the actors’ voices than their faces. While part of one scene is set in darkness.
Ultimately, while many interesting ideas swirl, what the play has to say about the art world, politics, and parenting feels somewhat unresolved and almost as enigmatic as Miriam’s disappearance is to her son, and to us. But while the whole might not be as satisfying as it could have been, there is plenty here to relish. Seavey is supremely skilled at setting a mood, and this is an impressive two-hander, made up of individually compelling scenes, with well-drawn characters and sharp dialogue that has a distinct tone and captivating flow to it. Nixon’s performance in particular makes The Seven Year Disappear one of this season’s crucial Off-Broadway events.
By James Kleinmann
The Seven Year Disappear officially opened on February 26th and has been extended through Sunday, March 31st, 2024. Performances take place at The Pershing Square Signature Center (The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street, New York.)
There will be post-show talkbacks on Wednesday, March 13th and Tuesday, March 19th. The performance on Wednesday, March 20th will feature Open Captioning by C2 Captioning.
Tickets are available at thenewgroup.org.
Leave a Reply