We seem to be in the midst of a solo show boomlet on Broadway, with established screen actors testing their mettle via the downright athletic feat of carrying a production alone. On Sunday, the Succession actor Sarah Snook won the Tony for best actress in a play for her 26 roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray; two years earlier, Jodie Comer won for her equally kinetic solo performance in Prima Facie and just this week, John Krasinski’s (mostly) solo show Angry Alan opened off-Broadway. The appeal is clear: the one-man show is a flex, a feat of performance under a significant amount of pressure. It takes a village, always, but it all comes down to the person on stage.
Luckily for Call Me Izzy, writer and journalist Jamie Wax’s debut play on Broadway, that person is Jean Smart. The 73-year-old actor, most famous, at least at the moment, for her starring turn on the Max comedy Hacks, possesses the kind of seasoned verve and magnetic presence that is never less than fun to watch, even if the material can’t match her. Like her Emmy-winning Hacks character Deborah Vance, Smart is making the most of a late-career renaissance, surfing a wave of goodwill to the bright lights at Studio 54 for her first Broadway role in a quarter century, where she plays a woman with starkly different means – though no less resilience.
