Kevin Leonard’s “Lionel Fantom” takes us on an ethereal three hour walk from the unnamed “Nowhere” disco/dance club on 14th Street and his home in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn with all the beauty and danger of New York in the early morning. The play begins in a fog filled disco, with “Walk-on” (Krystain Saxbie) and “Walk-on” (Marsha St/ Julian) dancing at the disco where Lionel spins records until 4 am. There is no dialog and no sound except for the music. The walk-ons dance with the sensuality that can only be found in a dimly lit club in the early morning. The dance’s conclusion and the conclusion of Lionel’s shift coincide. Lionel, “needing” to smoke and drinking from his flask, eschews the subway and begins the three hour walk to Ocean Hill, Brooklyn. Along the way, Lionel, sees NY as only it can look and “feel” in the morning before the city awakes. He passes and helps the homeless, puts down a mugger, encounters urban graffiti placed by artists trying to scream who they are, and laments the loss of a city that never existed as it is remaking itself in an image that seems to leave him out. All the while the walk-ons’ intermittently step onto the stage to remind us that they only need each other even as they never achieve togetherness.

It is a beautiful and melancholy journey that Emmanuel Martin Di Feliciantonia has written about and Rommell Sermon, in his directorial debut, has ably put on stage. But it is Leaonard’s “Fantom’s” laments and the “walk-ons’” disconnection while performing in perfect unison that remind us of how alone we can be, even in a city of 8 million.

4-7 is a beautiful piece that uses the illusion of silence to make the audience see themselves in Fantom’s world.