Thom Pain ( Based on nothing )
Opening Night: November 11, 2018
Closing: December 9, 2018
Theater: Signature Theatre
Drama Desk Award-winner Will Eno, the first writer to complete the Residency 5 program, returns to Signature for his first Legacy production with Thom Pain (based on nothing), directed by Oliver Butler (Obie and Lortel Award-winning The Open House) and starring Golden Globe Award-winner Michael C. Hall (“Dexter,” “Six Feet Under,” The Realistic Joneses). Called “a small masterpiece” by The New York Times and “one of the best monologues I’ve ever seen” by The Guardian, this surreal and very real one-man show follows Thom Pain as he desperately, and hilariously, tries to save his own life…or at least make it into something worth dying for.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
November 11, 2018
The dark and sulfurous chamber of Thom Pain’s mind has been unsealed for public inspection again. Audiences already familiar with Will Eno’s “Thom Pain (based on nothing),” which has been revived by the Signature Theater, may find this Stygian space roomier and less oppressive than they remembered. Oliver Butler’s new production, which opened on Sunday night, lets some fresh air and even a sliver of sunlight into the nocturnal depths of its title (and only) character’s imagination. And with a handsome, self-assured Michael C. Hall in the role of Pain (a last name that shrieks volumes), he appears as less of a lost cause than he once did. But while I’m usually grateful for glints of optimism in these cynical times, I can’t honestly say that this transformation is for the good. When I first saw “Thom Pain” at the tiny Soho Theater in London in 2004, its masochistic bleakness lingered on my skin afterward like a toxic slime.
READ THE REVIEW