Two cantankerous lovers meet at a landmark punk bar in the timeless home for misanthropy, the Lower East Side. Maddy (19), an overachiever and childhood competitive dancer, seeks new physical experiences to cover up the old ones. Hanes (24), a struggling standup with insomnia and a distaste for reality, struggles to give Maddy what she wants, which—of course—only causes her to want it more. Both need help but can’t help each other, making their relationship pretty much irresistible.
The more Maddy works to supplant her painful memories, the further away from her body—represented by a character called Dancer—she gets. Hanes’s comedy may thrive on his manic depression and crippling self-awareness, but his body—a Chaplin-esque sad clown—gets a kick out of punishing him for it. The Misanthrope is about the desire for and pain of cultivating intimacy with another person when you can’t live with the body that you’re in. This riff on Molière’s concept of a misanthrope is an anti-classic, anti-romantic love story that finds kinship with the music of The Velvet Underground and melancholic, East Village-born punk.
Co-Produced by Cheers to 40 and White Horse Theater Company, this production is a part of SubletSeries: Co-Op, HERE’s curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as a technical liaison.
