Tony-winning Sean Hayes exudes awkward brilliance and pathos as a troubled pianist
6 / 10
As Wright’s play emphasises, Levant’s worldview was ahead of its time – and so were the people who hired him, presaging an era of reality tv where uninhibited, unself-aware participants are wheeled on to scandalise viewers, with little thought given to the toll it takes on them. Still, this drama doesn’t feel quite as forward-looking in its perspective on mental illness. Levant’s madness here is romanticised, stylised: his hallucinations are used as a convenient way to flesh out his backstory. There’s something of a debt to Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus here, with its tale of an ageing composer haunted by his more successful rival Mozart. Levant sees visions of a sleekly suited George Gershwin, who taunts his loyal discipl, and imprisons him in an identity as a favoured interpreter of “Rhapsody in Blue”, nothing more.
