Nothing has made me regret Atlantic Theater Company going dark for more than two months this year like “I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan,” the absolute tonic of a show that reopens the company’s second stage.
Written for and performed by the downtown wonder David Greenspan, who has collected a half-dozen Obie Awards over his singular career, it was originally scheduled to open the day after Inauguration Day. But when previews were about to start, the stagehands went on strike, Atlantic Theater indefinitely postponed the production and we, the public, temporarily lost out on a source of comfort and delight in a time of chaos.
With a union contract ratified, we have it now, and frankly the abrupt suspension of this comedy by Mona Pirnot (tonally a complete departure from her play “I Love You So Much I Could Die”) has only enhanced its effect, adding a stratum to what was already a multilayered affair. Because this clever, funny play is both an attentive ode to Greenspan’s extraordinary artistry as a playwright-performer and an unsparing meditation on the psychic and financial precariousness of playwriting as a creative life.
It is, then, very much insider theater — yet it generously serves, too, as an initiation for the unfamiliar: into Greenspan’s exquisitely expressive whirlwind solo performance style as he plays a small gaggle of millennial women, and into the costs and payoffs of pursuing artistic ambition at full tilt.
Set in Brooklyn in the summer of 2022, the action takes place in the apartment of Emmy, a playwright freshly cognizant of the danger of being too broke to afford health insurance. She has invited a few writer friends over to do a reading of her new work in progress — a litmus test that, no pressure, will tell her whether to give up theater forever. Mona, a fellow playwright obsessed with Greenspan ever since she saw him perform “The Patsy,” is the first to arrive, followed by Sierra, who writes for television and consequently has gobs of cash to throw around.
Mona is also our narrator, explaining at the start: “I made these characters jealous and petty and competitive, unlike playwrights in real life. Just to clear that up. The parts of the play that are absolutely true, however, the parts of this play that are not fictionalized in any way whatsoever, are the parts where the character who is a little like me, the character who is called Mona, talks about how she feels about David Greenspan.”
The doubleness of hearing Greenspan, as Mona, discuss himself and his work is part of the intoxicating pleasure of this show, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, whose previous collaborations with Greenspan include the thrillingly strange “Four Saints in Three Acts.”
“I’m assuming you know David Greenspan,” Mona says to Emmy and Sierra, by way of explaining the play she is writing, which she intends to be performed by him and only him, despite their never having met and his knowing nothing about the project. When Sierra draws a blank, Mona enlightens her with amusingly exasperated condescension.
“He’s an artist’s artist,” she says. “Tony Kushner said when he first saw David Greenspan onstage he was like, ‘Why do I even try? I’m so jealous, why do I even bother, this guy is astounding.’”
Which might sound hyperbolic, but that is pretty much what Kushner said.
In acquiescing to Pirnot’s homage — and thank goodness he did — Greenspan confirmed their shared commitment to the stage, however hazardous it might prove as a way to earn a living. At 69, he remains an actor of pure theatricality: balletic, kinetic, comedic and utterly in control.
Out on the sidewalk after the performance I saw, I smiled for blocks — smiled the next day, too, just thinking about it. Am smiling now.
If you don’t already know David Greenspan, let this play do the introductions.
I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan
Through April 30 at Atlantic Theater Company Stage 2, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes.
