Expect the unexpected
By Michael Gottlieb

Playreaders Theater
The Unexpected Man 
Wed–Thu, Sep 16–17, 7pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
20 pesos

Jill and Michael Gottlieb perform Yasmina Reza’s, The Unexpected Man for Playreaders this week. Reza, best known for her worldwide blockbuster Art, and the current Broadway smash-hit God of Carnage, writes a small, intimate and compelling story in The Unexpected Man.

Set in a private compartment of a northbound train traveling between Paris and Frankfurt, two strangers, a man and a woman, share the space separately inside their own worlds. Preoccupied at first, they slowly begin to notice each other and work up the curiosity and courage to make a connection. It is the story of a writer and a reader and how each gives life to the other.

Paul Parsky is a world-famous novelist winding down to the end of his career. His best works are behind him. He is a constipated insomniac, pompous and bitter, musing upon his bitterness and which came first: his bitterness toward the world or his brooding over the bitter curl of his lip. Martha is a middle-aged romantic, a voracious reader and perhaps Paul Parsky’s biggest fan in the world. She is currently reading his latest work, The Unexpected Man, but is too star-struck and shy to bring it out of her bag. She doesn’t want to embarrass herself with her unbridled affection toward his work, and by extension, discomfit him.

The Daily Telegraph calls the play, “Enthralling, stimulating, amusing and perceptive.” The Financial Times said it is, “Delicate, witty, neatly constructed and peppered with irony. It captures the slippery, fleeting nature of the possibilities which surround us.”

Caryn James of The New York Times says of Reza, “She is a born satirist, a gifted and wry observer of the absurdities and feints of social life, as well as the small self-deceptions that help us all survive. Yet in her slender dramas and fictions she has also set herself up as a mini-Proust, grasping at immense themes that elude her: the slipstream of time, the isolation of individuals and especially of artists.”

Directed by Tom King, with lights/sound by Dic Simandl, The Unexpected Man is sure to be an expected pleasure.

Doors open at 7pm, with a 7:30pm curtain (sooner if full).