Front Men

Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal return to the stage in Sea Wall/A Life, an incisive pair of one-man shows that leave it all on the line.

- Adam Green

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 Sea Wall and Nick Payne’s A Life—open as a twin set next month 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. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the men telling us these stories are Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal, both returning to the New York stage for the first time since their 2017 Broadway triumphs in, respectively, 1984 and Sunday in the Park with George.

In A Life