Sometimes the only refuge from the brutalities of a life pre-destined for loneliness, poverty and violence is a poetic voice.
In playwright Jamie Wax’s one-hander “Call Me Izzy,” Jean Smart returns to Broadway after more than two decades with a stunning and soulful performance of a character who discovers such a voice — one that offers her liberation, but at a cost.
Smart plays Isabelle Scutley, a rural Louisiana woman trapped from the age of 17 in an abusive marriage. But sustaining Izzy — her preferred monicker — is her ability to express her secret self through her private poetry. It’s when her writings go public that she discovers the power of words.
Though Wax sometimes writes in all-too-familiar trauma territory — the nature of which is revealed early in the play and looms throughout — Smart elevates the material and makes Izzy’s story feel fresh, authentic and always compelling. (The play is set in 1989, presumably chosen as a time when there was less attention to the domestic plight of women like Izzy.)
Known most recently as the glam and fiercely assured Deborah Vance in her Emmy-winning series “Hacks,” Smart is transformed here into a woman of a different class, one of limited means and options, but also one of great warmth, mischief and liveliness. Yet another Smart turn and bravura performance should be a strong box office pull for this limited summer run.
Eschewing a contrived set-up, Wax’s Izzy relates her story simply and directly to the audience. Like Ishmael in “Moby Dick,” which she playfully references, Izzy is a character that is both inside her own narrative and yet outside it, too, acutely observing and chronicling her dauntless quest with sly asides, resilience and her “vivid mind pictures with words.”
Izzy’s need to connect her poetry and life to some unseen and unknown reader is reflected in Smart’s special bond with the audience, making the exchange of both actor and character deeply intimate and personal.
The play opens with Izzy in her late-night sanctuary: the bathroom in her trailer park home where she surreptitiously writes her poems on rolls of toilet paper with a mascara pencil, finding beauty even in the blue swirl of a flush. In this locked chamber she is defying Ferd, her terrorizing husband who sees Izzy’s writing as a threat to his dominance and ego. (Trigger warnings are appropriate for the show.)
Izzy tell us about her early schooling, a time when her enthusiasm for learning is dampened by a teacher who cautions her that “nobody likes a know-it-all,” a warning echoed by her mother and later, more menacingly, by her husband. Her first brush with poetry — Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” natch — is a revelation to her and begins her love of literature and passion for writing.
But Izzy’s self-awareness has its limits, as she is unable to pursue her own potential and break free of her loveless marriage. Shockingly, she feels power in her husband’s guilt after violent episodes. “That healin’ after an episode, it’s a dangerous drug,” she says.
Such perspectives make Wax’s Izzy a multi-layered and often contradictory character: self-assured, yet also self-doubting; brazen, yet guilty; fearless, yet also fearful. These swerves of impulses could easily go off the tracks but the combination of the steady direction of Sarna Lapine (“Sunday in the Park With George“) and Smart’s riveting performance make Izzy’s world real and her conflicts believable. T-Bone Burnett’s original music, Donald Holder’s lighting and Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ set design also give the production an atmospheric grounding.
Still, this straight-to-Broadway production could have been strengthened with more development. The revelation of Izzy and Ferd’s son is sketchy; a suicide tale lacks a set-up or point; intriguing female bonds are underwritten; and all-too-familiar tropes associated with spousal violence weaken the work.
To his credit, Wax achieves the challenging task of convincingly creating Izzy’s prize-winning poetry, which rings true to the character without being maudlin, arch or pretentious. Sometimes just a few graceful words, honestly expressed, can both reveal and haunt.
Early in the play, Izzy ponders: “If you write something and no one reads it, does it exist? Do I exist?” But then she imagines one day people reading what she writes and finally being seen. Wax’s play gives Izzy — and women like Izzy — that audience. Smart’s performance gives it a vivid life.
