Sabbath's Theater

Sabbath's Theatre (1995), a novel by Philip Roth, follows the exploits and pains of Mickey Sabbath, a stereotypical “dirty old man” and out-of-work puppeteer who prides himself on being manipulative and cruel, particularly to women. After many decades of more-than-friendship, Mickey loses his mistress and wingman, Drenka, and finds himself in a crisis, haunted by the ghosts of his past and the spirit of his mother, who encourages him to commit suicide rather than continue living such a shameful and depraved life. Mickey embarks on a quest to find a fitting end to his life, returning to the people and places of his past.

The novel opens with the death of Drenka, Mickey's lover of decades, who dies of cancer, leaving Mickey feeling alone and confused. Drenka, the same age as Roseanne, Mickey's wife, was the only woman who truly fulfilled Mickey—ironically, Mickey felt that Roseanne was too old for him, despite the fact that she took better care of herself than Drenka. After Drenka dies, Mickey realizes that he loved her more than he realized during her life; he feels guilty for never fulfilling Drenka's wish to be his only lover. Drenka's death sparks a crisis in Mickey, who leaves his alcoholic wife, Roseanne behind to return to New York in search of his ex-wife, Nikki, who left without a trace three decades before.

While Roseanne is in a rehab facility drying out (after her own crisis, sparked in large part by her husband's depravity and infidelity), Mickey goes to New York City to attend a wake and to try to find his ex-wife. The wake is for his old producer, Linc Gelman, who once put on his puppet theatre in New York City. Mickey can't find Nikki, but he does find Norman Cowan, Linc's old partner. Norman invites Mickey to stay with him, despite finding absolutely no trace of the puppeteer he knew three decades before in the washed-up old man in front of him.



Before long, Mickey gets kicked out of Norman's house. His womanizing antics upset Norman's wife and daughter when Mickey comes on to Mrs. Cowan and steals Norman's daughter's panties. Mickey also steals tens of thousands of dollars in cash, which he finds squirreled away in the Cowan's master bedroom, absconding with the money soon after arriving in New York.

Reuniting with his past self and the people who knew him then only inspires Mickey to take his own life. He is haunted by the voice of his mother, who insists that his life isn't worth living in its current state. Mickey decides to kill himself, but first, he knows he must visit his brother Morty's gravestone on the Jersey shore where he was raised. Morty died young after being shot-down in World War II. Mickey recalls the pain his brother's death brought upon the family, and how he fled that pain as a young man. At his cousin's house on the Jersey shore, Mickey finds his brother's final effects and communes with the box of items at his brother's grave. Remembering his brother coupled with the box of objects gives Mickey purpose, and he decides not to kill himself.

Returning home to Roseanne, Mickey finds another surprise—Roseanne has taken on a lover, Christa, whom Mickey once manipulated into his wife's bed. Roseanne kicks him out, and Mickey is left with nowhere to go but his beloved Drenka's grave. He pees on her grave in memory of her depravity and is caught by a police officer, Drenka's son. Mickey prays for a violent death but is too scared to resist arrest; the novel ends when Drenka's son releases Mickey into the woods where he wanders alone.



Sabbath's Theatre was the winner of the 1995 National Book Award for Fiction, among other honors. Philip Roth was a novelist and short-story writer who received dozens of honors before his death in 2018. He received two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle awards, three PEN/Faulkner Awards, and a Kafka Prize, among other honors. His books include a series of fictionalized memoirs, the “Zuckerman” novels, the “Nemeses” novels, and a series of standalone works of fiction, of which Sabbath's Theater is one.