COPING MECHANISMS

Philip Roth's "Sabbath's Theater" adapted for the stage, and "I Need That."

- VINSON CUNNINGHAM

It’s possible that John Turturro was born to play a dirty old man. The actor, one of my lifelong favorites, has a lurid, suggestive smile, curt at the edges, and eyes that shine with hidden information. He often seems to be holding back a disastrous secret, the kind that ruins families and topples friendships, and also often seems just about to spill the beans. In his affect, there’s a tinge of nihilistic fun: Let’s just forge ahead and see what happens!

Turturro, now sixty-six, is the same slim and restless New York City sidewalk denizen he’s always been, but with a softened posture and a gentle white froth bubbling through the waves of his hair. The mischief ’s still there, but alongside it, darkening its colors, is the shadow of experience. It makes some sense, then, that Turturro would play Mickey Sabbath, the horny comic hero—wanting to fuck, wanting to die, weighing those desires on an ever-shifting existential scale—of Philip Roth’s novel “Sabbath’s Theater.” Turturro collaborated with Ariel Levy (a staff writer for this magazine) on an adaptation of Roth’s book for the stage, now up at Pershing Square Signature Center, produced by the New Group and directed by Jo Bonney.