How it’s New York: The show takes place at Studio 54, which has a storied history in NYC.
How it’s (Irish) Scottish: Jean Smart’s father was first-generation Scottish-American: his parents emigrated from Scotland to Seattle, giving her a direct connection to the land of kilts and bagpipes.
CALL ME IZZY, by Jamie Wax, means well.
Set in a trailer park in Louisiana in 1989, the one-woman show starring Jean Smart (“Hacks”), the play tells the story of Isabelle, who would prefer to be called Izzy, a woman who marries young to an abusive, controlling man.
She finds her way out of the morass of her life through… poetry. A great big honking talent for poetry.
The play has to be set in 1989, because the second you move it into modern days the degree of isolation (no cell phones, no internet, snail mail, poetry on paper— Izzy ends up writing her words on toilet paper to escape her abuser’s wrath) no longer makes sense.
Izzy’s gift for writing saves her, first by giving her an outlet, then by giving her a literal out.
But all victims deserve help, not just those who are talented. I’m sure Wax wasn’t trying to privilege her talent— but he did, all the same.
I’m sure of this, by the way, because the show means so, so well that it holds after-show talkbacks on Important Social Issues (the night I went it was on book banning, No Book Bans; the show also supports the Joyful Heart Foundation, onelove, and Pen America, among others). Wax related how he was inspired by the remarkable paintings of an aunt, whose husband would not let her paint.
So he comes by the “saved by talent” trope honsetly, not via THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES, Frank D. Gilroy’s 1968 play in which writing = soul.
But WAITRESS this is not. Not only did the musical have Sara Bareilles’ lilting, haunting songs, it told an altogether more complex tale: its heroine once loved her husband, its heroins ie pregnant.
Here, Izzy takes a class and (spoiler alert) has an affair and (spoiler alert) wins an award.
It means well, but everything and I do mean everything is predictable, down to her poems, which are very nice, and I certainly credit Wax with writing them. Daring to have your character be an incredible poet and then knowing you have to make those poems yourself is no easy feat, so credit where it is due.
Smart charms as she tells her stories, which are often funny and wry in the midst of her pain. She’s really a marvel, effortlessly playing a woman at least 30 years younger than she is, with grit, humor and charisma. If you love “Hacks,” you’ll want to see this.
Unfortunately, Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ set design is far too small for the space (sure it’s challenging to suggest trailer park claustrophobia in a big stage but this didn’t work), and Tom Broecker’s costumes unwittingly suggest Izzy owns two shirts. That may be deliberate but it does make it hard to sense time going by. Sarna Lapine’s direction is unobtrusive, when more was needed to raise this higher.
The show Means Well. Is it enough? Maybe.
For this critic, it was an earth-bound Thud.
CALL ME IZZY continues at Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., through Aug. 24.
