Cynthia Nixon plays world-renowned performance artist Miriam, plus seven other roles, and Taylor Trensch portrays Miriam’s son and business partner Naphtali in Jordan Seavey’s The Seven Year Disappear, directed by Scott Elliott.
Part coming-of-age story, part domestic drama, and part mystery tale, Jordan Seavey’s The Seven Year Disappear is a deeply unsettling work that ponders the thorny question: How far should an artist go to mine his or her life for art? Directed by Scott Elliott, Seavey’s play reveals the darker side of the art world, when a renowned artist disappears for seven years and her son goes into free fall.
Before the play begins, stars Cynthia Nixon and Taylor Trensch, dressed in identical black jumpsuits and boots, sit opposite each other at a rectangular table. Nixon plays world-famous performance artist Miriam (plus seven other characters); Trensch plays Miriam’s gay alcoholic son and business partner, Naphtali. At first blush, their sitting seems like an endurance stunt, but Nixon and Trensch are reenacting a pared-down version of Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović’s famous piece, “The Artist Is Present.”
Trensch and Nixon portray a mother and son in Seavey’s two-hander, The Seven Year Disappear, at The Pershing Square Signature Center.
When the lights go up, Nixon and Trensch slip into the skins of their characters: The play mostly moves in reverse chronology from 2016 to 2009, although the Prologue, set in an apartment in Bushwick, takes place on April 4, 2009.
Nixon wastes no time in showing Miriam’s true colors. She’s an egomaniac with a capital E—and furious that Abramović has been invited to present her work at the Whitney:
The Whitney is mine —
The Whitney is mine —
And then just, poof! Out of the blue! They offer her—!
Watching his mother’s rage escalate, Naphtali quells it with the surprise news that he has brokered a deal for her at MoMA: the museum has agreed to commission and present her work later that year.
Ironically, this dream come true for Miriam evaporates when she mysteriously becomes a missing person on the day that she would have accepted her residency at MoMA. Worse, for the next seven years, her traumatized son Naphtali will drift into drugs, alcohol, and casual sex, searching for her in the faces of other people.
He has a relationship with Wolfgang, his mother’s former manager and lover, who has become his on-and-off lover over the years. Indeed, it is Wolfgang who first tells Naphtali about his mother’s bipolar diagnosis:
Wolfgang: “I’m sure I need not remind you she’s an exhaustingly complicated person, Naph. The bipolar disorder alone make it so that you never—"
Naphtali: Wait, what.”
Wolfgang: “No. . . Certainly you—did you not know. . .?”
Naphtali’s other lovers know his mother as a renowned artist. On a blind date with Brayden, an associate curator of performance at MoMA, Naphtali wonders if this MoMA staffer is concealing information on his mother’s whereabouts. Although things start out well on the date, Naphtali and Brayden argue over whether Miriam’s disappearance is her latest attempt at performance art.
Nixon and Trensch in The New Group production of Seavey’s The Seven Year Disappear..
Photographs by Monique Carboni.
Another lover is Tomás, an undocumented immigrant whom Naphtali met while working as the LGBTQ liaison on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. In fact, Tomás points out to Naphtali, he and Clinton have an almost mother-son relationship. Tomás warns him: “She’s not your mother, ya know.”
Bizarrely, Miriam returns, visiting Naphtali in his sublet in Crown Heights on November 25, 2016, and asks him to participate in her new commission from MoMA, which is based on her seven-year disappearance and reunion with him. She also tells him that once her new commission sparks others commissions, she hopes to have “a little cushion” of funds that would enable her to take him to his childhood fantasy destination: the Great Barrier Reef. Naphtali is livid over her proposed plans, and tells her so:
Are you seriously trying to bribe me into participating in your stunt—with the promise of an Australian vacation. . .?
Disappear is not easy to fit into any genre. Whether it’s a satire of the art world, a parody of performance artists, or a domestic tragedy, it’s difficult to pin down. Throughout the action, John Narun’s striking video design suspended from the flies shows footage of Nixon and Trensch on flat screens. Narum’s work suggests the soullessness of both characters in the sacrifices they make and are willing to make for art.
All in all, Seavey’s two-hander, even with Nixon and Trensch’s fine acting, is a miss. No matter from which perspective one views these characters, they are unsympathetic. Indeed, as Naphtali says to Wolfgang early on in Disappear: “It’s good to care about people, Wolfie—about people. We matter more than paintings.”
The New Group’s production of The Seven Year Disappear plays through March 31 at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42 Street). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday with newly announced Sunday evening performances at 7:30 p.m. on March 3, 17, 24, 31 and a Wednesday matinee at 2 p.m. on March 6.
Playwright: Jordan Seavey
Director: Scott Elliott
Sets: Derek McLane
Lighting: Jeff Croiter
Costumes: Qween Jean
Projection: John Narun
Sound: Rob Milburn & Michael Bodeen
