Sean Hayes Takes On a One-Man Psychological Thriller Off-Broadway

Sean Hayes is used to playing to 1,000-seat houses and millions of television viewers. This winter, he is aiming smaller—and stranger.

The Emmy-winning Will & Grace star and Tony winner for Good Night, Oscar is alone onstage in The Unknown, a new 75-minute psychological thriller that began previews Jan. 31 at Studio Seaview, an Off-Broadway theater with just 296 seats on West 43rd Street. Hayes plays a blocked writer who retreats to a remote cabin and slowly comes to believe he is not alone—or not entirely in control of what is happening.

“It feels like climbing a mountain every time,” Hayes said of performing the one-man piece, which requires him to switch among 10 different characters without a break. “I didn’t take the easy route, I took the harder route… I may be brilliant, I may suck—who knows!”

The Unknown opens officially Feb. 12 and is scheduled for a 10-week limited engagement through April 12. It marks Hayes’ most extreme stage challenge to date and highlights a broader shift in New York’s theater economy: major screen and Broadway names turning to star-driven solo shows in intimate Off-Broadway venues as a way to draw audiences, manage costs and test new work.

A thriller built on shifting identities

Written by Obie-winning playwright David Cale and directed by Tony-nominated director Leigh Silverman, The Unknown centers on Elliott, a writer who secludes himself in a rural cabin in hopes of shaking a crippling case of writer’s block. Instead, the situation turns ominous. Elliott begins to suspect he is being watched and stalked, including by “an actor I didn’t cast in one of my shows,” as Hayes has described the premise.

What follows, he said, is “a very tantalizing, seductive game of cat and mouse” in which it is never entirely clear whether Elliott is inventing the danger, living it—or both.

The show runs roughly 75 minutes without intermission. Promotional material and early descriptions present it as a “provocative” solo thriller that blurs the line between reality and invention, asking whether Elliott is writing a thriller, living one or trapped in between.

Cale, a British-born, New York-based writer and performer known for intricate solo plays, called Hayes “brilliant” and said he was “thrilled by the inspired pairing” of the actor with the material.

The Unknown is the third in an informal trilogy of solo thrillers Cale has developed with Silverman, following Harry Clarke, first performed Off-Broadway by Billy Crudup, and Sandra, which premiered in 2022. All three works place a lone performer at the center of a suspense plot built on shifting identities and unreliable narration.

“David Cale is a masterful storyteller and I am thrilled to be embarking on our third collaboration with The Unknown,” Silverman said in a statement. She praised Hayes as “charismatic” and “dynamic” and said she looked forward to sharing “this enthralling show with audiences.”

Hayes’ biggest stage risk—on the smallest stage

For Hayes, 55, the production extends a stage career that has accelerated in the past decade. After achieving wide recognition and an Emmy Award as Jack McFarland on NBC’s Will & Grace, he made his Broadway debut in the 2010 revival of Promises, Promises, earning a Tony nomination. He later starred in the quasi-solo comedy An Act of God before originating the role of Oscar Levant in Doug Wright’s Good Night, Oscar, which opened in Chicago in 2022 and on Broadway in 2023. Hayes won the Tony Award for best leading actor in a play for that performance, then reprised the role in London.

He is also a co-host of the popular podcast SmartLess, alongside Jason Bateman and Will Arnett, and continues to work in film and television. Recent projects include roles in Bradley Cooper’s film Is This Thing On and a new adaptation of The Running Man.

By contrast, The Unknown places him in a far smaller room with corresponding expectations of intimacy. Studio Seaview, at 305 West 43rd St., was formerly the Tony Kiser Theater, a venue owned and operated by nonprofit Second Stage Theater. Production company Seaview—a commercial producer behind shows such as Stereophonic and new stagings of Romeo + Juliet and Once Upon a Mattress—acquired the space and rebranded it as Studio Seaview effective Jan. 1, 2025.

The renovated venue is marketed as “a new Off-Broadway home for daring, artist-driven work” in an intimate setting, with a redesigned lobby and bar intended to make the theater visit feel like a curated experience.

“We are obsessed with creating an environment where people are excited to inhabit,” Seaview leadership said when the acquisition was announced. The company’s chief operating officer, Nate Koch, called the purchase an opportunity to help drive “the renaissance of Off Broadway” and to operate “without the constraints of a traditional Broadway model.”

Why solo shows are on the rise

One of those constraints is cost. On Broadway, average paid ticket prices have hovered around $150 in recent seasons, with top-priced seats for star-led limited runs often exceeding $300. Premium tickets for high-profile productions have reached as high as $900 for certain performances.

Tickets for The Unknown start at $69, including fees, according to the theater, with group sales and special packages available. While still a significant expense compared with film or streaming, the price undercuts many Broadway star vehicles. The show is also listed through the Theatre Development Fund, which offers discounted seats to members for Broadway and Off-Broadway productions.

The smaller venue and single-actor format also help keep operating costs comparatively low, a consideration for commercial producers in a city where audiences and grosses have yet to fully return to pre-pandemic levels. Broadway attendance in the 2023–24 season remained below the last full pre-pandemic year, and several large-budget shows have struggled to sustain runs.

Studio Seaview has leaned into a clear programming pattern: short, star-driven engagements that can be marketed as limited events. In 2025, it hosted Angry Alan, a one-man dark comedy starring John Krasinski, and The Ziegfeld Files, a solo piece written and performed by Jesse Eisenberg, along with a small-ensemble work titled Prince Faggot. Theater listings have described The Unknown as continuing that run of “starry solo shows.”

Solo theater has long been part of New York’s Off-Broadway landscape, but the current wave taps into post-pandemic audience habits. After years of watching performers on screens, some theatergoers are seeking out live events with a clear promise: one recognizable actor within arm’s reach, no understudy and no ensemble to share the spotlight.

At the same time, the stories being told in these works often reflect contemporary anxieties. In The Unknown, Elliott’s isolation and growing paranoia about a figure who feels both familiar and threatening echo broader concerns about solitude, creative pressure and the blurred boundaries between professional and personal life. The idea of being pursued by an actor one declined to cast nods directly to the power imbalances and resentments within show business.

Hayes’ recent stage choices have increasingly focused on characters under psychological strain. In Good Night, Oscar, he portrayed pianist and television personality Oscar Levant, whose on-air appearances blended virtuosity with visible mental distress. In The Unknown, he again plays a man gradually losing his grip, this time without a supporting cast.

Hayes has said he was drawn to the project in part because of its structure.

“It has an ending you will never see coming,” he said, describing the conclusion as “so clever.”

Whether The Unknown itself will transfer or extend beyond its 10-week Off-Broadway run is uncertain. For now, it offers a snapshot of how New York theater is recalibrating: a television star and recent Broadway headliner alone on a bare stage, testing both his range and the appeal of a new kind of small-scale, high-profile event.

As the run unfolds, Hayes’ throwaway line about the risk he is taking—that he “may be brilliant” or “may suck”—doubles as a measure of the experiment surrounding him. In a 296-seat room, the bet on intimate, celebrity-driven work is playing out in real time, with every seat close enough to see the strain, and the gamble, on his face.