Callan (Linda Lavin, left), is hired by #1 (Daniel K. Isaac, center), to break the news of his illness to his sister Polly (Marinda Anderson), in Noah Diaz’s New York debut, You Will Get Sick. Photograph by Joan Marcus.
Noah Diaz’s You Will Get Sick is a surrealist, allegorical play about illness, loss, and human connection. The primary setting is The Big City, in something resembling modernity before cellular phones, though this is also a primeval, mythic world, where giant birds are liable to snatch you up (best to buy “certified bird insurance,” just in case). The characters are blasé about such events, but there’s also an awareness that something isn’t quite right: the play’s unseen narrator notes that “a bird caws outside your window / it’s too tremendous, too prehistoric / too loud for a city this big.”
The “you” is the unnamed protagonist (Daniel K. Isaac), a young man who is terminally ill but can’t face telling people about his unspecified illness, so he puts up flyers to find someone who can tell people on his behalf. (The actors are assigned numbers, 1 through 5, and some of them portray multiple characters, some of whom have names.) These flyers lead to Callan (Linda Lavin), an octogenarian community college acting student, who is capital Q Quirky. Her dream is to play Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz (“Did this Dorothy see the trials of war and age sixty years?” #1 asks her). Their relationship is entirely, almost ruthlessly, transactional—everything she ends up doing for him, from giving him a sip of water or wiping his forehead when he’s feverish, has a price—though it also becomes a friendship.
Anderson, background, as an acting teacher with an eager student portrayed by Nate Miller. Photograph by Justin J. Wee.
The staging, under Sam Pinkleton’s direction, is virtuosic: the scenic design, by the design collective Dots, is stylish and spare, largely without props, and situations described in the narration—a phone conversation with a faulty connection, the problems with #1’s body as he showers—are aided by excellent lighting (Cha See) and sound (Lee Kinney) design. There is discordant music (original music by Daniel Kluger) when #1 has mental blockages and can’t come up with certain words that brings out the agony of these moments. There is a breathtaking change of scene toward the play’s conclusion that elicited gasps from the otherwise frustratingly unengaged Roundabout audience. The Wizard of Oz motif goes beyond Callan’s desire to portray Dorothy, as #1 slowly begins to morph into the Scarecrow, his straw body breaking apart at one point and levitating, with magic and illusions by Skylar Fox.
#1 brings Callan to a restaurant called Burger Bang to meet his sister Polly (Marinda Anderson, in one of her many roles). Their waiter (Nate Miller, playing many characters) is in a state of acute sadness, sobbing uncontrollably on- and offstage. Callan and Polly bicker, and meanwhile #1 coughs up hay. Polly, after an interlude of absurdist humor, finally gets the news from Callan:
He’s sick
His body is sick and it’s not good
He was scared to tell you, so he paid me to do it
And by the way, I wanted to order a grilled chicken Buck Buck Bite
The audience then learns that #1 and Polly had a very sick brother, Patrick, who was cared for by #1. The play, which was written before the COVID-19 pandemic, is not just about the sick self, but our commitment to others and the impact they can have on us after they are gone, perhaps even as the voice inside our heads. A series of revelations at the end speak to these themes in moving and unexpected ways.
Lavin as Callan is an unconventional business associate who becomes a friend to the sick protagonist. Photograph by Joan Marcus.
Lavin’s performance is notably big, with some carefully crafted zingers and moments that invite hamming it up, which entertains but also takes attention away from #1—Callan almost becomes the protagonist, which is a shame because Isaac is such an appealing performer and one wants more from him. The play’s Wizard of Oz allegory isn’t a one-to-one mapping of the movie’s characters or themes, but rather a collage of almost psychedelic images and motifs. The technical marvels of the production sometimes come at the expense of the characters’ connections: none of them emerge as more than types, which is perhaps fitting for the absurdist vein, but less compelling as drama.
You Will Get Sick is a thought-provoking experimental work, and it is a play with heart, though sometimes indulgent moments of weirdness for its own sake prevent a more profound exploration of #1 and his relationships.
Roundabout Theatre’s production of You Will Get Sick runs through Dec. 11 at the Laura Pels Theatre (111 W. 46th St.). Evening performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are Wednesday and Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are available by visiting roundabouttheatre.org.
