{"id":102002,"date":"2026-01-16T05:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T05:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/102002\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T05:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T05:05:08","slug":"the-disappear-fun-while-it-lasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/102002\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disappear: Fun While It Lasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 15, 2026 8:55 pm <\/p>\n

By Frank Scheck<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Hamish Linklater, Miriam Silverman, and Dylan Baker are among the stars of Erica Schmidt’s world premiere play riffing on show business and marriage<\/p>\n

\"\"Hamish Linklater and Miriam Silverman in The Disappear. Photo credit: Jeremy Daniels<\/p>\n

It\u2019s frustrating trying to get a handle on the new play by Erica Schmidt at the Minetta Lane Theatre. And there\u2019s good reason for that: the playwright doesn\u2019t seem to 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\u2019s 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\u2019s likely to quickly disappear from your memory.<\/p>\n

[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo\u2019s \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u00a0review here.]<\/a><\/p>\n

Schmidt (Cyrano, All the Fine Boys), who also directed, has assembled a top-flight cast for the production, isn\u2019t surprising because it features the sort of juicy comic roles that actors crave. It\u2019s 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 Mirian Silverman); and their climate change-obsessed teen daughter, Dolly (Anna Mirodin).<\/p>\n

Benjamin, whose career hasn\u2019t gone well lately, is struggling to finish the screenplay for his upcoming horror film. Actually, his \u201celevated\u201d horror film, since he\u2019s pretentious enough to describe his aspiration as \u201cArtaud meets Poe.\u201d When a beautiful, quirky young actress, Julie (Madeline Brewer, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale), arrives to audition for the lead role, Benjamin, who\u2019s deeply unhappy in his marriage, becomes immediately besotted. Complications, needless to say, ensue.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s my muse,\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s not subtle about the latter: \u201cI look at you and I see my death,\u201d he tells his bewildered wife.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019s film. Raf, charismatic but emotionally troubled, isn\u2019t really familiar with Benjamin\u2019s work, but he\u2019s a lifelong fan of Mira\u2019s novels. Much to Benjamin\u2019s consternation, he insists that he\u2019ll only do the project if Mira writes the script.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 whose oblique title refers to a plot element in Benjamin\u2019s new project, which sounds suspiciously like Gone Girl \u2014 is stuffed with lacerating, often very amusing observations about both subjects, with Schmidt\u2019s 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\u2019s often very funny, and gets a dramatic comeuppance at the play\u2019s end (which doesn\u2019t tonally fit with the rest of the evening), doesn\u2019t make spending more than two hours with him pleasant.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not to say that The Disappear isn\u2019t mostly entertaining, but rather that its whole is less than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

The Disappear opened January 15, 2026, at the Minetta Lane Theatre and runs through February 22. Tickets and information: audible.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"January 15, 2026 8:55 pm By Frank Scheck \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Hamish Linklater, Miriam Silverman, and Dylan Baker are among…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-102002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}