Is.Man - Theater - Notebook - New York Times:
I don’t know how Muslims who believe in honor killings usually talk, but I’m pretty sure they don’t say, “That’s what Britney would do.” Yet that’s what the lead actor in the Dutch writer Adelheid Roosen’s “Is.Man,” a play about such murders, said at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn on Sunday, breaking character and speaking to the audience as he took off the head mike that had been crackling and creating problems.
That actor, Youssef Sjoerd Idilbi, had earlier asked someone in the audience to turn off a cellphone. And soon after the Britney remark, as scurrying technicians gestured to him that they were getting a new headset, he had evidently had enough and simply walked offstage.
It always takes a while to know when an exit is unplanned, but the performers left behind were vamping for a little too long: a musician sang and played, and a white-robed dervish who had been sitting quietly in the background got up and started whirling. But you knew Mr. Idilbi was leaving the building when he popped in from the wings wearing street clothes and carrying a plastic bag from Foot Locker. He retrieved something he had left at the rear of the stage and walked away, carrying any hope of a dazzling American debut for Ms. Roosen with him. The playwright herself took over the role, but it wasn’t the same.
There are other strange elements: Mr. Idilbi had probably been unsettled because the previous night’s performance, the first, had been canceled when the sound system failed altogether. A few audience members from that night who had returned on Sunday were overheard to be a little disgruntled too. But the worst part is that Mr. Idilbi, a professional actor in the Netherlands, had been giving such a strong performance before his unscripted departure.
9:18 PM
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