Delirium

Delirium is an Off-Broadway play for two actors, adapted and directed by Igor Golyak from Eugène Ionesco's one-act Délire à deux, known in English as Frenzy for Two, or More. A couple who go by Him and Her bicker at home while a war rages beyond the door. The comedy starts out absurdist, and the producers describe the story underneath as one about survival and love.

This is a new adaptation, not a revival. Arlekin Players Theatre developed and produced it, with Craig Balsam, Patrick Catullo and Thomas M. Neff as lead producers. The New York engagement is a transfer of the company's 2026 world-premiere production from Boston, and it was billed as a strictly limited run. The production calls the source one of Ionesco's least performed plays, and Golyak has said he had never seen it staged before he took it on.

As of October 2026, Andrey Burkovskiy plays Him and Chulpan Khamatova plays Her. The performance is in English and runs 1 hour 20 minutes, with no intermission.

Place and time are left vague: there is a flat in a building and a conflict that keeps getting closer. Inside, the two characters do what long-term partners do, which is disagree. The play opens with a dispute over whether a snail and a turtle are the same animal, because each wears its home on its back.

The bickering does not stay small. Hot or cold, window open or shut, and soon the war itself: are the soldiers in the building heading up the stairs or down, and who is winning? The couple try to find dance music on the radio but keep landing on news of the world coming apart. Him builds an antenna out of an umbrella and jumper cables to improve the reception.

There is more to them than quarreling. Between fights they dance and joke, and the show makes clear that this is a relationship, not only a feud. Her left her husband for Him 17 years ago, and each of them says they regret it. Beyond their door there are gunshots, air raids and neighbors being taken from their homes. The producers frame the evening as two people fighting for each other's survival rather than against each other.

Eugène Ionesco, a Romanian-French writer who worked mainly in French, is a founding figure of the Theatre of the Absurd and the author of The Bald Soprano. Délire à deux was first staged in Paris in 1962. In his version, Him and Her share the play with a soldier and the neighbors, five characters in all. Golyak trimmed the roster to the two central figures.

Golyak also translated the French text into English himself and widened the source material. He worked in passages from Ionesco's journals, radio texts based on what Ionesco heard during and just after World War II, and two children's stories that Ionesco wrote for his daughter.

The title is Golyak's choice too. He sees the frenzy of the original as something that belongs to everyone, not just to two people in an apartment. The director has also said that the evening includes improvisation and some engagement with the audience.

The set is built from metal scaffolding, corrugated metal, mattresses and a fish tank, and a live fish stays in the tank for the whole performance. In Boston the scaffolding also held boxes that dropped debris and objects into the action. The effects are theatrical rather than digital, which gives the evening a hand-made, low-tech feel. Original music by Anna Drubich runs through the performance.

Arlekin staged the world premiere at the Virginia Wimberly Theatre in the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. It opened on June 18, 2026, and the run was extended to July 2, 2026. The two leads of the Boston production moved with it to New York. In Boston, the actors also drew audience members into the action.

The New York premiere was announced on July 13, 2026. First previews began on September 8, 2026, and the official opening was September 24, 2026. The engagement was first announced as strictly limited, and on September 21, 2026, two weeks of performances were added to the run.

Golyak links the show to the experience of its two stars. Both left Russia after the political upheaval there, and he says their own displacement feeds the production, which deals with alienation, love and survival.