It’s frustrating trying to get a handle on the new play by Erica Schmidt at the Minetta Lane Theatre. And there’s good reason for that: the playwright doesn’t seem to have a handle on it herself. The work deals with serious themes, almost more than it can handle, while attempting to be the sort of broad comedy that Charles Busch might come up with. Not much of it makes sense, either narratively or thematically, but it’s a lot of fun along the way thanks to the clever writing and terrific performances. You might as well enjoy the ride of The Disappear, now receiving its world premiere from Audible, because it’s likely to quickly disappear from your memory.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Schmidt (Cyrano, All the Fine Boys), who also directed, has assembled a top-flight cast for the production, isn’t surprising because it features the sort of juicy comic roles that actors crave. It’s set in an old Upstate New York farmhouse (beautifully designed by Brett J. Banakis), the home of self-important, emotionally tortured filmmaker Benjamin (Hamish Linklater); his self-assured, highly successful novelist wife, Mira (a radiant Miriam Silverman); and their climate change-obsessed teen daughter, Dolly (Anna Mirodin).
Benjamin, whose career hasn’t gone well lately, is struggling to finish the screenplay for his upcoming horror film. Actually, his “elevated” horror film, since he’s pretentious enough to describe his aspiration as “Artaud meets Poe.” When a beautiful, quirky young actress, Julie (Madeline Brewer, The Handmaid’s Tale), arrives to audition for the lead role, Benjamin, who’s deeply unhappy in his marriage, becomes immediately besotted. Complications, needless to say, ensue.
“She’s my muse,” he announces to his skeptical British producer Michael (Dylan Baker, having a lot of fun in the role), who tells Benjamin that the casting is impossible. That doesn’t stop Benjamin from coming up with a new project for his object of adoration, one based on Dido and Aeneas no less, while simultaneously blowing apart his marriage. And he’s not subtle about the latter: “I look at you and I see my death,” he tells his bewildered wife.
It’s not long, however, before Mira finds a romantic distraction of her own in the form of handsome young movie star Raf (Kelvin Harrison Jr., of the films Luce and The Photograph), whom Michael has proudly recruited for Bejamin’s film. Raf, charismatic but emotionally troubled, isn’t really familiar with Benjamin’s work, but he’s a lifelong fan of Mira’s novels. Much to Benjamin’s consternation, he insists that he’ll only do the project if Mira writes the script.
The complicated proceedings are never really believable, playing more like a sexed-up Kaufman and Hart backstage farce than a modern portrait of show business and marriage. To its credit, The Disappear — whose oblique title refers to a plot element in Benjamin’s new project, which sounds suspiciously like Gone Girl — is stuffed with lacerating, often very amusing observations about both subjects, with Schmidt’s witty one-liners delivered in expert fashion by the top-flight cast. But it suffers from a sour taste, especially since its lead character Benjamin is shown as foolish, self-absorbed, and unlikeable. The fact that he’s often very funny, and gets a dramatic comeuppance at the play’s end (which doesn’t tonally fit with the rest of the evening), doesn’t make spending more than two hours with him pleasant.
The playwright never seems to find a coherent tone, or even theme, for the play, which she stages with the sort of self-indulgence demonstrated by so many writers directing their own work. That’s not to say that The Disappear isn’t mostly entertaining, but rather that its whole is less than the sum of its parts.
The Disappear opened January 15, 2026, at the Minetta Lane Theatre and runs through February 22. Tickets and information: audible.com
