When Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge teamed up to perform Sea Wall/A Life at the Public Theatre this Spring, the show instantly became one of the hottest tickets in New York. The actors also got great reviews for their performances. So it was inevitable that if schedules could be worked out that a Broadway transfer would soon follow. It has. Sea Wall/A Life has been in previews and officially opens on Thursday at the Hudson Theatre in Manhattan.
The show combines two one-act monologues. Sea Wall, performed by Sturridge, was written by Simon Stephens. He’s the playwright behind Heisenberg and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (for which he won Tony Award.) The play finds Alex, a photographer in his early thirties, who has found stability with his family (a wife and a daughter.) A tragedy befalls him and he struggles through the monologue to come to an understanding of why this has happened to him.
Sturridge received a Tony nomination for his performance in Orphans in 2013.
In A Life, written by Nick Payne, Gyllenhaal plays a new father facing two possible tragedies. Having not read the play I cannot tell you more, but reviews have indicated that the premise here is more about unspoken words than it may be about which tragedy (or both) he must face.
Payne wrote the two-character play Constellations, which opened on Broadway in 2015 which starred Gyllenhaal with Ruth Wilson. Constellations was seen in Los Angeles at the Geffen Playhouse in 2017 (with Allen Leech and Ginnifer Goodwin).
Gyllenhall, who also produces through his Nine Stories company, most recently appeared on Broadway in the 2017 revival of the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical Sunday in the Park with George. He, along with co-star Annaleigh Ashford, will reprise their roles in a London production of the musical at the Savoy Theatre beginning in June of 2020.
Carrie Cracknell directs Sea Life/A Wall. When the show opened at The Public Theatre it garnered a Critic’s Pick from New York Times critic Jesse Green.
This is a limited engagement that runs through September 29th.
For tickets go here.
All photos by Max Vadukul/Courtesy of DKC/O&M