Off-Broadway's Thom Pain Gets New Star and Closing Date

Will Eno's Thom Pain based on nothing will end its New York run a week earlier than previously expected. The show will now have its final performance on December 24 because of scheduling of an upcoming show at the theater, according to a production spokesperson. Starting November 21 and through the end of the run, the solo show will be performed by Michael Milligan in place of current star T. Ryder Smith.

Milligan is currently the Thom Pain standby. He has appeared off-Broadway in The Golem. His regional credits include mountings of A Thousand Clowns at the Studio Arena Theatre, The Glass Menagerie at Charlotte Rep and Candida at the McCarter Theatre.

Thom Pain based on nothing is a wry monologue in which an ordinary man, Thom Pain, muses on childhood, yearning, disappointment and loss, cataloguing the eternal agonies of the human condition as he draws his audience into his last-ditch plea for empathy and enlightenment.

The production, which opened on February 1, received mixed to positive notices including out-and-out rave in The New York Times. Hal Brooks directs. At the time it closes, it will have played a total of eight previews and 378 performances.