In a new Broadway play, Jake Gyllenhaal attempts something radical: normality

JAKE GYLLENHAAL IS NO STRANGER TO PLAYING strangers. He’s Hollywood’s go-to guy for delivering loners, slippery souls who aren’t quite what they seem, dudes who are hiding something behind those hedgerow eyebrows, from the tortured cowboy in Brokeback Mountain to the obsessive cop with a history in Prisoners to the superhero Mysterio who’s neither super nor hero in his current film Spider-Man: Far From Home.

However, for six nights a week during a brief stint on Broadway this summer, Gyllenhaal is transforming into what may be one of his most alien characters yet: a regular bloke, with the same daunting problems nearly everyone faces, the departure of a parent and the arrival of a child. And unlike so many of the men Gyllenhaal inhabits, the guy in Sea Wall/A Life, a two-act show in which Gyllenhaal’s character