←Recommendations of The Next Time Portnoy Sneezed

Who doesn’t love a meta-theatrical play with minimal staging requirements? Heyman has created a unique and entertaining story that effectively blends humor with existential dread.

This is a clever concept, protagonist meets their narrator, I wish I had thought of it! Portnoy wakes up from a nightmare straight into another, at least a very strange dream. Who is this intruder, how does he know so much, why does he want him to sneeze? Portnoys reaction to his narrator is hilarious in places, other times he's naturally very worried. I love this play!

What an interesting and entertaining way to examine the relationship between narrator and protagonist. When the narrator is quite literally unveiled, we are left to wonder whose story is being told. Any writer who has struggled to make a character conform to their expectations (all?) will readily identify with this story. This would be a pleasure to see on stage!

We don't always get to tell our own stories or even shape the way the world perceives us, an issue that even impacts the storytellers and narrators among us no less! The chance to change that is nothing to sneeze at, at least until sneezing becomes the most important factor in bringing it all together for one final chance to break through the narrative confines.

Break out the black pepper grinder, it's time to go to work and Heyman's got the whole thing set right up for us.

Simultaneously hilarious and existentially terrifying, Heyman asks the real question that's on all of our minds, "How the hell would you react to meeting your narrator?" What follows is a surprising and tender exploration between watcher and watched, writers and characters, audience and artist. It is a beautiful musing on symbiotic relationships and unexpected connection, and a delightful spot of meta comedy. This would be a hit at any short festival.

Writing can be a lonely business. What if the characters we conjure in our work could see us, and the love we put into their stories could be reciprocated? Sam Heyman demonstrates effective restraint, suggesting a rich and specific world-behind-our-world, but leaving readers to decide both what it means, and what happens to its emissary when he breaks the rules by making himself known. PORTNOY ventures into the absurd and metatheatrical in ways equally disquieting and comforting.

Sometimes the protagonist is not who you think it is. Like the rom-com lead's pining best friend who is clearly the obvious choice, Carl the Narrator's need for connection is so strong, as is we humans' basic need to see and be seen, that he risks prospective life and limb to, simply, matter.
The stakes are life and death in Heyman's quiet little gem of a piece, and we are reminded that the most simple of needs are often the ones most worth risking everything-

Just like the characters they describe, narrators have needs and flaws. In this deliriously meta comedy, a beleaguered narrator must cajole an ordinary man into performing an ordinary act as the conventions of narrative storytelling are turned on their head.

Sam Heyman takes the convention of having a narrator, plays with it, tosses it in the air, smashes it with a hammer and rebuilds it in this funny, funny play. For the man behind the curtain, everything rides on Portnoy committing a mundane, everyday act. But when Carl inserts himself into the story, much to Portnoy's dismay, the consequences are world-changing.

This is a fun play that would be a treat for audiences and actors.

Bravo! And gesundheit!

There is a tenuous relationship between the storyteller and the story they tell. Sam Heyman gives us a tumultuous look at that relationship. A wild, mind bending tale of narrators and protagonists, consequences and seasonal allergies.