'Delirium' Off-Broadway review — pick your battles

Read our review of Delirium off Broadway, an absurdist comedy play adapted and directed by Igor Golyak from Eugène Ionesco’s Frenzy for Two, or More.

Summary

• Delirium is a comedy play about a couple who bicker over little things while war rages on outside
• Actors Andrey Burkovskiy and Chulpan Khamatova have excellent and hilarious chemistry
• The show explores what it's like to live through political upheaval and also make it through your everyday life with loved ones

Though some attend the theatre to escape the chaos of the outside world, director/adaptor Igor Golyak's Delirium is an exceptional argument for doing so to face that very chaos. Based on Romanian French absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco’s Frenzy for Two, or More, Golyak’s production achieves delicate balances between timeliness and timelessness, hilarity and horror, and the result is an astonishing piece of work.

Delirium's success rests on the ability of Golyak and his two leads, Andrey Burkovskiy as Him and Chulpan Khamatova as Her, to animate the banal. The play begins with the couple inanely bickering about the difference between a snail and a turtle. Although war is raging outside their apartment, as we gradually learn, these more trivial quarrels persist. The sound of gunfire and bombs outside may be near-deafening, but that won’t stop Him and Her from clashing over whether it’s too hot or cold, whether to open or shut the window, or what their lives would have been like if they’d never gotten together.

These squabbles begin to extend to whether the soldiers in their building are going upstairs or downstairs, who's winning or losing and why, and whether the couple can believe what they see and hear. Golyak both draws humor from these wordy games while illustrating how easy it is for language itself to lose meaning in times of political upheaval, making these arguments both funnier and also more deeply frightening. He pushes the marriage play to its breaking point and asks if committing to the bit will help you survive what feels like the end of the world.

Burkovskiy and Khamatova, with effortless chemistry, underline the meaninglessness of their characters' petty debates and demonstrate a moving commitment to them — both characters, at different times, hang the survival of their relationship on the arguments. Burkovskiy gives Him a macho stubbornness that easily translates to clownishness, conveyed through forceful, rigid movement that crumples at the sound of bullets. Khamatova is adamant but elegant, jokey but unwaveringly certain she's right. Together, the pair have an easy call-and-response quality that makes their fights believably spiky, delicate, and familiar all at the same time.

That these characters relentlessly tease each other even as everything outside seems to fall apart makes Delirium striking in its comedy and sorrow. On the one hand, Him and Her have each other. On the other, they may fail to recognize the reality of their situation and its consequences on everyone else.

Him and Her try to tune their radio to a samba but pick up news of the world's deterioration. They play hot potato with a grenade, and they climb scaffolding to look out upon a disorderly, horrifying world. And yet, though the soldiers may come knocking on their door, they both still seem to be crazy in love. In the midst of chaos, it’s the only thing they can rely on.

Delirium summary

As the sounds of war, terror, and the fall of society rage outside, a man and a woman bicker over the most everyday parts of their life, with only their large goldfish as company. While the war makes it harder to determine what their future will be, they escape to their own past as lovers and what brought them together, wondering if they will be able to survive it all.

What to expect at Delirium

Delirium is staged at the Space at Irondale, a former Sunday School venue with cracking gothic-style wall paintings and a second floor that acts as a mezzanine. The space's charmingly ramshackle feel adds to the show's atmosphere alongside Jan Pappelbaum and Cecilia Xuetong Feng’s exceptionally apocalyptic set design comprising only metal scaffolding, mattresses, and a fish tank. There's the impression that the audience has stumbled upon this couple among the detritus of war. Excellent sound from Denis Zabiyaka and lighting from Jeff Adelberg play with the tension between the couple’s heightened world and the disaster happening just outside their windows.

Delirium runs 90 minutes with no intermission.

What audiences are saying about Delirium

The review aggregator Show-Score shows a 94% audience approval rating for Delirium as of writing, with theatregoers at early performances praising the acting and directing.

• “Amazing play, wonderful actors, great director.” - Show-score user Inna6261
• “It is a must see play, for the direction and for the acting.” - Show-score user CHRISTOPHER 7049
• “A play that makes you feel, shake to your core, and stay with you! Outstanding! Fantastic performance by the actors! Deserves a bigger stage!” - Show-score user Marianna G

Read more audience reviews of Delirium on Show-Score.

Who should see Delirium

• Fans of dramedies will enjoy Andrey Burkovskiy and Chulpan Khamatova’s virtuoso performances, which balance Looney Tunes-level slapstick with humanity within their characters' archetypes. As the play shifts in tone, the actors keep it feeling coherent.
• Fans of great production design will adore Jan Pappelbaum and Cecilia Xuetong Feng’s set and props and Denis Zabiyaka's sound, which expertly craft a stage world that is bizarre and abstract while also channeling the real anxieties, big and small, of today's world.
• Ionesco's work is rarely revived in New York, so now’s the perfect time for his fans to see how his work speaks to contemporary times. The Ionesco-curious, including fans of absurdist work more generally, should also take this opportunity to engage with this witty, wonderfully strange writer.

Learn more about Delirium off Broadway

Delirium is wonderfully sardonic, daffy, and emotionally affecting about our modern age, capturing the uncanny reality of living in a world defined both by political chaos and the boringness of just getting through each day with your loved ones.

Learn more and get Delirium tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Delirium is at The Space at Irondale through November 7.

Photo credit: Andrey Burkovskiy and Chulpan Khamatova in Delirium off Broadway. (Photo by Austin Ruffer)