Noonan, who died in February at 74, played Michael in the first stage production of “What Happened Was …” opposite Karen Sillas as Jackie, both reprising their roles for the 1994 movie adaptation that won the grand jury prize at that year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Outside the bounds of this revival thrum the backbeat of Manhattan books and movies of its original era, and their stories of obsession, ambition and love — “Fatal Attraction,” “Bright Lights, Big City” and “Working Girl” — with “What Happened Was …” revealing a lower-key, harsher truth of New York living. It’s a city that Jackie, like Michael, relishes viewing from her window, yet feels separate from.
Stoll and Strong spikily excel at playing Michael and Jackie’s nervy dinner roller coaster, joshing, misreading, then comprehending each other. Their alternating bafflement, suspicion and empathy reveal the rewarding yet perilous cost of honesty. As with Audible’s other repertory productions — including the return of “Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,” starring Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty (through April 30) — “What Happened Was …” offers the opportunity to see big-name actors perform in a compact theater.
Just as in his Tony-nominated role in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate,” Stoll subverts his charismatic physicality to play a fractured, adrift man. Strong, from “Saturday Night Live,” is both wittily goading and movingly soul-baring, inhaling wine and cognac while wielding a knife to cut a birthday cake in a moment that teeters between comically giddy and slightly unhinged.
Music provides a balm to both co-workers. The play begins with an excited Jackie playing Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move,” then later, post-confessionals, Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.” Michael recalls, at age 13, listening to the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” imagining his own name being woven into the lyrics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/theater/what-happened-was-review.html
