HardLove
Written by Anıl Can Beydilli; adapted by Esin İleri and Miray Beşli; directed by Jee Duman
SoHo Playhouse | 15 Vandam St, New York, NY 10013
November 6-December 12, 2025
I haven’t been to the Huron Club at Soho Playhouse in a minute, and I forgot just how intimate that downstairs space is. There’s barely room for a bed, a lamp, and a single chair. Which, of course, tells us everything. This is a world of closeness. A one-night room. A room meant for bodies and breath. You see the books on the nightstand and the bed right beside it, and you know before a word is spoken that sex is not only going to happen, but that we are the voyeurs.
There’s a coffee table book on mushrooms. One page references the Destroying Angel, beautiful, alluring, and toxic. And that feels right. There’s a sense that something here could run sweet, sharp, or dangerous depending on how far the night goes.
This play was originally written in Turkish by Anıl Can Beydilli and translated into English by Esin İleri, and the translation holds onto that raw emotional pulse. We meet two very different people: Chi Chi, played with electric abandon by Miray Beşli, and Teddy, played with a kind of thoughtful, hesitant sincerity by Chandler Stephenson. Both actors lean into the awkwardness of a one-night stand, especially in their private, in-between moments, the moments where you are not sure what to say, the moments where you overthink being seen.
Jee Duman’s direction is seamless: confident, spacious, and deeply attuned to the rhythm of real intimacy. He knows when to let the silence speak. The staging makes stunning use of the space. The bar becomes an extension of emotional geography, a sliver of house right becomes a bathroom, and the bed, of course, holds the world. In such a confined room, every movement matters, and each moment lands with intention. The choreography of the intimate scenes strikes a careful balance between the individual experiences of the characters and their shared moments together, creating closeness without ever making the audience feel invasive.
And this was opening night, flawless. Every beat landed, every pause felt natural, every movement felt intentional.
There is the clumsiness. The misinterpretation. The confusion, the push and pull, the joke that lands wrong, the retreat, the giving in. Chi Chi and Teddy both acknowledge that they are not syncing, not exactly. And yet Chi Chi keeps reaching for meaning, for something deeper, for understanding what is happening between them and what it could mean.
This play could almost be the first of a trilogy: Chi Chi, Teddy, HardLove. Beşli and Stephenson have created characters rich enough to follow beyond the room. I found myself curious about who they are outside this one night. But perhaps that longing is the point. A one-night stand is supposed to end. One and done. And the ache is part of the story.
What I loved about this piece is that it takes the familiar premise of a one-night stand and opens it up to deeper layers. There is pleasure and curiosity, yes, but also pain, memory, boundaries, identity, and the fragile space between wanting to be seen and wanting to disappear. The play blurs lines between intimacy and performance, comfort and risk, what is normal and what is considered deviant. What is routine for one person can feel like an earthquake for another.
Duman, Besli, and Stephenson are all graduates of the Actors Studio Drama School, where I also studied, and it shows. The moment-to-moment work is lived, grounded, and risky. There is a stylized realism that never feels forced. The actors allow themselves to go there fully, and because of that, we follow.
A small room. Two bodies. One night. A story that expands far beyond the walls.
Click HERE for tickets.
Review by Malini Singh McDonald.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on November 7, 2025. All rights reserved.