Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal are returning to the stage on August 8 in Sea Wall/A Life, an incisive pair of one-man shows that leave it all on the line.
At their best, one-person plays have the intimacy and urgency of an encounter with someone who needs to get something off his or her chest, ideally portrayed by an actor who compels us to listen. Two such plays—Simon Stephens’s—open as a twin set in February at the Public Theater. Under the direction of the smashing Carrie Cracknell, each is a short monologue that, beneath its spare surface, grapples with profound questions about life, death, and identity.
Like Gyllenhaal, Sturridge feels a strong affinity for the author of the monologue he’s performing—in this case, Stephens , in whose 2009 playhe made his stage debut. “I love Simon for his lyricism and for his brutality,” Sturridge says, “and how the collision of those rather disparate things oddly always seems to spawn something entirely human.
A father with a young family of his own , Sturridge instantly identified with the narrator. His challenge, as he sees it, is whether to protect himself inside a character or expose himself. “If you ask me who Alex is, the answer that I don’t want to give, because I’m afraid of it, is ‘Me,’ ” he says. “At the same time, I know that if I’m going to do this well, I have to answer that question to an audience, and it’s going to be about figuring out how to go, ‘Fuck it. This is who I am.
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