Ionesco’s “Delirium” opens Off-Broadway: critics praise Igor Golyak’s adaptation with Chulpan Khamatova and Andrey Burkovskiy

The New York premiere of Arlekin’s production “Delirium”, a new adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s play “Frenzy for Two, Or More”, is officially open Off-Broadway at The Space at Irondale, as BroadwayWorld reports. The play has been adapted and directed by Lortel Award winner Igor Golyak, and stars the two international artists Chulpan Khamatova (“Her”) and Andrey Burkovskiy (“Him”). The show will run until 7 November 2026.

In “Delirium”, a couple is trapped in an endless quarrel, while the world outside their apartment collapses into chaos. The boundaries between reality and illusion melt away, and the absurd quarrels — from the debate over whether the snail and the turtle belong to the same family, to the argument over whether the window should be opened or closed — become at once a way of surviving and a form of connection. What begins as absurdist comedy, as the review roundup puts it, reveals a deeper truth: two people who are not fighting against each other, but for each other’s continued existence.

The critics have received it well. BroadwayWorld‘s roundup gives the production an average of 76.7%: Kyle Turner of New York Theatre Guide writes that the characters «mock each other relentlessly even as everything around them seems to be collapsing», which makes the play «striking in both comedy and pain»; Jonathan Mandell of New York Theater praises the actors’ physical endurance amid the stage chaos, while Loren Noveck of ExeuntNYC commends Denis Zabikaya’s sound design and Anna Drubich’s music, which give the absurd its reality.

Particular attention has also gone to the human context of the cast: Khamatova, who left Russia of her own accord in protest, and Burkovskiy bring to the stage a carefully crafted physical clowning — the Lighting & Sound America critic sees them as a gender-mixed version of Beckett’s Didi and Gogo, «who spend their lives away while the darkness closes in around them». For Golyak, known for strongly visual productions such as the three-hour Holocaust drama “Our Class”, this is another success: as critic Thom Geier writes, «a dark comedy for the age of doomscrolling».

“Delirium” is an adaptation of Ionesco’s lesser-known 1962 play, which Golyak has expanded with physical scenes and improvisation. The show plays at The Space at Irondale until 7 November — and it is a chance to see how classic European absurdism reads today on the New York stage.