Sarah Silverman’s ‘The Bedwetter’ Is as Proudly Rude on Stage as the Page

It is a lot to set to song—bedwetting, depression, a young girl prescribed shed-loads of Xanax, family grief, divorce, and one salty-as-hell grandma—and the musical adapted from Sarah Silverman’s memoir, The Bedwetter (Atlantic Theater, to July 3) absolutely goes for it.

This uneven but intriguing production begins with a 10-year-old Silverman (Zoe Glick) arriving at her new school in Bedford, New Hampshire and announcing, “I’m just really, really fucking excited to be here!” Immediately the teacher, Mrs. Dembo (Ellyn Marie Marsh; very funny, butch swagger and “New Hampshah” accent), says the young Sarah cannot talk like that—though talking like that went on to make Silverman’s name.

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If Silverman is known for the confrontation and profanity of her comedy, The Bedwetter shows those seeds in very convincing early ’80s costume (Kaye Voyce) and hair and wigs (Tom Watson). Sarah’s mother, Beth Ann (Caissie Levy), is so depressed she barely gets out of bed. Her father, Donald (Darren Goldstein), is a salesman who has sex with seemingly every woman who crosses his path, his unapologetic smarminess proudly displayed in corny TV ads. Her older sister Laura (Emily Zimmerman) is too cool for the school she is forced to share with her younger sister—and she has the best ’80s hair in the show.

The young Sarah is already seemingly as fearless as her older self, growing up in the shadow of her parents’ divorce and shuttling between both homes. She delights in her father’s dirty jokes. When she impersonates celebrities, it is not their voices she is mimicking but their farts; cue some nuanced raspberry-blowing. But her bedwetting is a depressing constant, and something she wants to solve. Bring on the doctors and pills.

The young Sarah is so naturally different and outrageous, what seems weird to us seems normal to her. She does not react to things as others might—whether this is innate confidence or barriers-up defense is never clear.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Glick sings in one song to a group of classmates being awful to her, adding for good measure that she’s too “Jew-y to ignore.” This is a topsy-turvy world, in which the “did they just say that?” quotient is high, and Glick’s mostly high-pitched singing obscures the sharpness of lyrics and aspects of Sarah’s character.

Ashley Blanchet is a statuesque, rictus-smiled Miss New Hampshire inhabiter of Sarah’s dreams who glitters, waves, and delivers tough truths. Rick Crom, playing two of Sarah’s shrinks, is lugubriously funny—in one incarnation confessing his own domestic demons; and in the other prescribing the Xanax which will make Sarah, temporarily, into a near-vegetable. Her frenemies-turned-mostly-friends (Charlotte Elizabeth Curtis, Charlotte MacLeod, Margot Weintraub) sing a frenzied song about what they imagine has happened to her when she disappears from school.

Bebe Neuwirth reigns unmatched as Nana, a grandma who wants Sarah to mix the perfect Manhattan, and has the best song of the show, “To Me,” in which she sings to Sarah: “I adore ya/ Almost as much as/ Your sister Laura.” She is a flinty and warm presence, all at once. Sarah must make sure her glass is always full—until she realizes grandma’s drinking may well be killing her.

Silverman’s voice, the voice of the memoir, is ringingly present and savagely witty in the musical’s book (by Silverman and Joshua Harmon; the lyrics are by Silverman and Adam Schlesinger; the music is by Schlesinger, the Fountains of Wayne musician who died, aged 52, of COVID-related complications in 2020).

The finale of the show answers the question of whether Sarah will perform something conventional like her peers at the school talent show (“The Rose,” hilariously underpowered, as Bette Midler did not intend), or go her own way. Hmm. What do you think?

The musical is an exercise of tricky balances—because everything is in extremis. The actors have to switch from cartoonish vulgarity to emotional depth-plumbing in a blink.

Levy has an encyclopedic knowledge of TV shows and movies (rightly standing up for Thelma Ritter’s presence in All About Eve in which she played the barb-dispensing Birdie), and yet she is almost near-catatonic. Goldstein is both gross horndog and befuddled, sweet dad completely at sea trying to help his daughter with her bed-wetting. Levy gets one of the show’s few straight-out sweet songs, as she in her own mental pain tries to reach out to her daughter feeling hers, reassuring her that the “one thing in common” she and Donald have is the love they have for Sarah and Laura.

The musical features excellent writing and cutting zingers, alongside a sketchier story and character progression, raising more questions than answers about the family, its many traumas, tensions and fractures, and what Silverman herself went through and how it affected her. It also edges around the depths of the family’s pain—particularly around the death of Sarah’s baby brother—but never fully digs into it.

The show ends with a supportive anthem for the young Sarah and her bedwetting, reflecting a kind of “well, we’re all screwed up” attitude. That may be true, and it may be reassuring, but it’s also a deflecting, mischievous shrug. The Bedwetter may make you laugh. It also keeps its audience at a calculated arms-length.

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