New York Magazine – August 05, 2019

56 new york | august 5–18, 2019

The CULTURE PAGES

sea wall/a life is at the Hudson Theatre.

T

hey headline Sea

Wall/A Life, but aside

from the curtain call,

Jake Gyllenhaal and

Tom Sturridge are never

onstage at the same

time. But they’ve clearly become friends,

joking when I meet them backstage about

posing on the sofa in the style of those sul-

try ads for Burn This with Keri Russell

and Adam Driver. As the more established

movie star, Gyllenhaal acts a bit like the

older brother to Sturridge’s more intro-

verted, fidgety British sibling, though we’re

grading on a curve here: They’re both ner-

vous, fidgety people. Also, they are wearing

matching gold chains.

The show started at the Public Theater

in February and March and now has

moved to Broadway with the same direc-

tor, Carrie Cracknell. In the first of the

two monologues, Sea Wall, by Simon Ste-

phens, Sturridge plays a photographer

who describes his relationship with his

wife and father-in-law; then comes A Life,

by Nick Payne, in which Gyllenhaal’s

character talks alternately about his

father’s illness and his wife’s pregnancy.

Both monologues reveal a tragedy at

their centers, which might make them

seem like acting exercises. As might get-

ting two actors together to talk about

what the other is doing onstage and how

each of them got there. One thing Gyllen-

haal is sure of is that the show has been

subtly enlivened in its transfer. If nothing

else, by the weather outside. “People

Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson

Se a Wall in the

Summertime

Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom

Sturridge in dialogue about taking

their conjoined monologues

to Broadway. By Jackson McHenry

56

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