Bill Irwin Takes the Stage After 'The Odyssey' — With Mixed Results

Bill Irwin's transition from Christopher Nolan's mythological epic to the boards of a Roundabout Theatre revival is the kind of career pivot that demands attention — though not always for the reasons one might hope. His new Broadway production of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid, which recently opened at the Todd Haimes Theatre, arrives with considerable pedigree but departs with considerably less comic momentum than its source material has sustained for three and a half centuries.

From Cyclops to Comic Playwright

Irwin, who portrayed the Cyclops in Nolan's highly anticipated The Odyssey, has worn many theatrical hats over a distinguished career — clown, physical comedian, stage virtuoso. Here he adds adapter to that résumé, fashioning his own English-language version of Molière's 1673 satire about a hypochondriac patriarch consumed by medical paranoia. The premise remains as pointed today as it was in the Sun King's France, but according to TheWrap, Irwin's condensed, 90-minute, intermission-free staging too rarely converts that potential into actual laughter.

Where the original likely unspooled across a boozy three-hour evening with room to breathe, Irwin's version strips the play to its chassis without necessarily tightening its engine. Scenes that should generate easy, crowd-pleasing comedy — including a post-enema exit and a gleeful mock-striptease — land with little more than polite, uncertain chuckling. Director Brandon J. Dirden approaches the material as screwball farce, a reasonable instinct, but the physical staging and Karen Perry's extravagant costuming never quite cohere into a unified comic grammar.

Where the Production Finds Its Footing

The evening is not without genuine pleasures, and they tend to arrive from the supporting players rather than the production's central architecture. Brooks Ashmanskas, as one of the play's fraudulent physicians, engineers something genuinely strange and funny — a performance that blends broad physical comedy with an almost surreal internal logic all its own. Hiram Delgado, as another quack, brings an unexpectedly precise comic instrument in the form of a high-pitched vocal register that briefly electrifies the room.

Irwin himself earns his warmest response in the production's closing moments, when Argan — finally free of his psychosomatic chains — performs a gentle soft-shoe number with a cane. It is a quiet, graceful piece of physical storytelling, the kind of work that has defined Irwin's stage legacy, and it serves as a reminder of just how sophisticated his body-as-instrument technique genuinely is.

Nolan's Orbit and What It Signals

The context of Irwin's recent film work is worth noting. Nolan's The Odyssey has assembled one of the more remarkable casts in recent blockbuster memory, and the director's collaborative instincts — explored in pieces like how he approached bringing key talent aboard — suggest a filmmaker who prizes performers with deep theatrical roots. Irwin fits that profile precisely, and whatever the limitations of The Imaginary Invalid as a revival, his presence on Broadway in the wake of the Nolan production speaks to a career operating at a genuinely high level of ambition.

Nolan himself continues to exert a gravitational pull on cinematic conversation, from his influence on fellow directors to the interpretive questions swirling around The Odyssey's own narrative choices. Irwin's Broadway detour, however bumpy, is the kind of artistic restlessness that tends to enrich screen performances — even when the stage outing itself doesn't fully ignite.

The Verdict

As a piece of Molière scholarship, Irwin's adaptation demonstrates clear affection for the source. As a piece of popular theatre designed to fill a house with laughter, it falls measurably short of its ambitions. The production has its islands of invention, but too much of the surrounding water is flat.