It’s always amusing how often a play’s dialogue includes a handy review of the work under consideration. My immediate example—Nick Payne’s The Unbelievers.
Payne—whose resumé is impressively long and includes A Life and Constellations, both greatly admired here—now uncorks his latest stateside number in which these similar lines are urgently uttered: “Is everything that I’m saying making sense to you all?” and “Well. I’m tryina make sense of the world around me. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.”
It’s my doleful duty to report that too often during The Unbelievers I had the uncomfortable feeling that the characters, all of them speaking urgently, were also speaking for me about the need to make sense of what I was witnessing. In other words, this situation wasn’t so much offering insights into my—our—confusions about life, as the best plays always do.
It wasn’t so much a direct offering as a veil (or veils) challenging those of us sitting obediently in the dark to put together obscure clues when actually and before too long what was going on was blatantly obvious.
I had the odd sensation that Payne thought he’d have some personal fun, well, tickling his audience. Why be straight-forward when seeming distractions might prevail? It so happens that I have never thought being tickled was anything more than a nuisance, certainly when being at the recipient end.
So, what in blazes is going at the heart of The Unbelievers?
Miriam Wright (Lauren Ambrose) is an atheist, which is to say she’s the prominent unbeliever among Payne’s several characters. (If there are any others, I think I missed it.) But just how her atheism helps or harms her during her intermissionless tumult never becomes clear. Maybe that’s Payne’s point. Maybe Payne thinks atheism ultimately has no answers because in life nowadays, it asks an obsolete—or obsolescent—question.
More insignificantly in the play’s consequences, Miriam is merciless caught in hysteria’s throes. She’s dealing with a missing son, Oscar, gone now for seven years. No reliable clues to his disappearance have surfaced, although presumably unreliable clues haver come her way.
One is a photo showing, if I have this right, a young man seen in Ghent, who might be Oscar. Even though Miriam insists whoever is in the photo isn’t Oscar, she’d rather search in Ghent than agree to hold a memorial that others around her think might be fitting at this late. The mere mention of a memorial causes her hysteria to accelerate. (Yes, The Unbelievers takes place in England, and dialect and vocal coach Deborah Hecht does her job well.)
The other characters include Rev. Karl Khoury (Hadi Tabbal) and Nancy Khoury (Nina Ross), daughter to Miriam and Nick who, it seems, shows signs of resentment at being the neglected sibling in deference to the relentless Oscar search. Miriam’s second husband David Wright (Tom Riley)—from whom she’s unsatisfactorily separated—shares (or at least accept) her atheism. He doesn’t so readily go along with her other grievances.
Then there’s PC Elizabeth Hawkins (Marian Neshat), who runs an agency that attempts to locate missing children. She drops in a few times to declare her determination to have the success she hasn’t yet achieved.
Notice that all the above can be straightforwardly outlined. Yet it isn’t. The script indicates “no blackouts, no scene changes and no transitions.” This translates as characters can be talking when other actors enter Phil Feinberg’s accommodating set through an upstage opening and mill briefly until all or some of the actors in the interrupted scene saunter off.
This is an aspect of Payne’s tickle-tickle approach. Granted, audience members may take this in quickly enough. Indeed, some members may even enjoy the process, the challenge. But it can be trying and somehow unnecessarily contrived.
The Unbelievers does boast one crowning achievement: the red-haired Lauren Ambrose. She’s able to instill hysteria with no end of other facets. It’s as if her fiery hair becomes increasingly enflamed. At times, she evidences invincibility. At times, she sinks in unremittent defeat. Whatever she’s doing demands constant attention. Miriam is the kind of character actors can’t wait to take on.
And director’s wants to bring out all the inflammatory potential. Knud Adams is the director and steers a strong cast throughout. But it’s the Ambrose-Adams team that gives The Unbelievers double A marks.
The Unbelievers opened November 5, 2026, at City Center Stage I and runs through November 29. Tickets and information: manhattantheatreclub.com
