Goodnight, Oscar review: Will & Grace star Sean Hayes is magnetic
Goodnight, Oscar review and star rating: ★★★★
It’s fairly obvious why writers turn to televisual ratings to source their intrigue: every scribe knows the pain of having their stories or subjects exploited to reach bigger audiences. File Goodnight, Oscar next to a litany of West End hits on the subject, including Network at the National Theatre and Best of Enemies with David Harewood with Zachary Quinto. In Doug Wright’s piece, Sean Hayes, most famously Jack from Will & Grace, is magnetic as troubled fifties pianist and comedian Oscar Levant.
Like other projects about Hollywood legends, including the National Theatre’s runaway hit The Motive and The Cue, Goodnight, Oscar is perhaps a little too infatuated with its subject. Much of what we see of Levant is the public persona; the man who relied on sharp wit as his defence mechanism. This isn’t to take away from Hayes’ thundering central performance, which captivates: but the some of strongest emotional parts tend to be the small snippets of time we spend with Levant in private, away from his performative guise.
Goodnight, Oscar: Sean Hayes offers glimpses of the darkness are too fleeting
Goodnight, Oscar is set across one night in 1958 when Levant has left a psychiatric ward on a four-hour release organised by his wife, so he can perform on Tonight Starring Jack Parr. This instance didn’t happen, though writer Doug Wright, who premiered the piece in Chicago and took it to Broadway in 2023 where it earned three gongs, including Lead Actor for Hayes, has said his play is based on the “spirit” of actual events.
Hayes delivers a riot of one-liners, framed by the supporting cast, who largely exist to elicit the gags. Levant is banned from politics, religion or sex talk and tells NBC president Bob Sarnoff “you just took the whole world off the table.” It makes sense: “I’m controversial,” he says at another point. “People dislike me or they hate me.” Smug, self-interested and ill, Levant is a Wildean figure, as enigmatic as he is other-worldly.
It is intriguing when we briefly experience him in his dressing room alone, away from the carousel of media types and his wife June, played by Rosalie Craig. Hayes holds his head in his hands and we get a glimpse of the darkness of his condition, though it is too fleeting. We see him perhaps one more time being fascinatingly vulnerable: “I still have these voices in my head,” he tells his wife after the filming is done. It raised the hairs on my arms to peer within, though I was left longing for more.
Special shout out to David Burnett’s George Gershwin, who appears as a ghostly apparition alongside Levant. The two were friends in real life, though they shared a professional rivalry; Burnett does a fabulously creepy job treading the line between charismatic entertainer and representation of the horrendous trappings of schizophrenia. Hayes spars well with Burnett, and commands in a tremendously physical performance, though we rarely get to properly peer beneath the curtain.
Goodnight, Oscar plays until 21 September; barbican.org.uk