By Matthew Wexler
As veteran comedian Deborah Vance, Jean Smart has spent the last four seasons of the hit TV show Hacks ensconced in a luxurious Las Vegas estate. This summer, she trades the desert’s dry heat and LA’s misogyny for the swampy oppression of an abusive husband in a Louisiana trailer park circa 1989.
It’s been 25 long overdue years since Smart was last on Broadway, though she cut her teeth on regional stages around the country before her film and TV career took off. Jamie Wax’s new play, Call Me Izzy, while not the bigger-than-life tour de force of Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray, gives Smart plenty to bite off.
Smart plays Isabelle Scutley, an amateur poet trapped in a toxic marriage with a beer-swiggin husband, Ferd, intent on keeping her place. The words in Izzy’s mind eventually find themselves written down, and when destroyed, emerge again on toilet paper hidden in a tampon box. A neighbor, Rosalie, encourages her development with a free continuing education course, which leads to a published work that pushes Ferd to the brink.
Smart’s performance lives up to her name: measured and nuanced, both vulnerable and full of rage, depending on which of the handful of characters she’s inhabiting. Her adjustments, under the direction of Sarna Lapine, shift seamlessly from one to the next. Perhaps it’s the clipped cadence of friend Rosalie, or a broadening of the shoulders as she embodies Izzy’s menacing husband. Smart pulls us into the conversation—not an easy task in a 1,000-seat theatre.
Still, Call Me Izzy’s 1989 time stamp and its harrowing circumstances never quite meet the caliber of its star performer. There’s no question who to root for, though the play’s final moment may leave some wondering if Izzy finally finds her freedom or faces a reckoning from which there is no next chapter.
Call Me Izzy plays on Broadway at Studio 54 through August 17.
‘Call Me Izzy’ takeaway
The Violence Against Women Act wasn’t passed until 1994. Thirty years later, Tulane University’s Newcomb Institute published a study with staggering data:
“Half of Louisiana adults have encountered some form of violence from a current or former romantic or sexual partner. The research also highlights the disproportionate impact on women, who are three times more likely than men to experience severe and potentially fatal forms of intimate partner violence.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or text START to 88788. Chat support is available 24/7 at thehotline.org. All services are free and confidential.
