Alex Tatarsky’s “Sad Boys in Harpy Land”

Sad Boys in Harpy Land is a clown play about wanting to die. A falling apart coming-of-age tale from playwright and self-proclaimed “experimental clown artist” Alex Tatarsky (“outrageous and profane,” New York Times), the one-person show is a semi-autobiographical tour-de-farce that takes place in the hellscape of the mind.

A “blistering, brilliant show, relentless in its invention, humor, and inquiry” (New York Theatre Guide), the piece is a deranged adaptation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Mission, a novel about a little boy who wants to be a theater artist but isn’t very good at it.

Embracing the spiral, the unfinished, and the broken bits, Tatarsky ushers audiences through a series of existential vignettes to examine how depression often masquerades as individual malady—when it might be better thought of as a shared sadness.

“Tremendous…superb” — New Yorker (This Year’s Best Theatre, 2023).