Theater review by Raven Snook
Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise is set in the break room of a Hobby Lobby store in Idaho, where most of the employees can’t seem to catch a break. The latest hire is the lonely and laconic Will (Peter Mark Kendall), who has recently moved to Boise. There he forges uneasy relationships with his new coworkers: no-nonsense manager Pauline (Eva Kaminsky), who gives him a shot despite holes in his résumé; Anna (Anna Baryshnikov), a fragile bookworm with terrible taste in books and men; Alex (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), an anxious teenager and would-be composer; and Alex's in-your-face brother Leroy (Angus O'Brien), a graduate art student who's fiercely protective of his younger sibling.
In a soul-sucking environment of corporate religiosity, Will stands out. This seemingly mild everyman has fire and brimstone in his belly; he's not just there for the minimum-wage salary, but for souls—one of them in particular. And since religious fanaticism feels even more dangerous now than when A Bright New Boise premiered in 2010, the play seems both prescient and perturbing in its current revival at the Signature.
Hunter, who grew up in Idaho and attended a fundamentalist Christian high school, depicts his characters with sympathy and compassion. It’s a miracle that they have any hopes or dreams at all in such a dead-end place, well rendered in Wilson Chin's kitsch-perfect set, with a broken microwave and Hobby Lobby drones mumbling incessantly on the closed-circuit TV. Director Oliver Butler elicits discomfitingly authentic performances from the entire cast, led by the phenomenal Kendall; Pauline's anti-union evangelizing, Anna's dreadful lit picks and Leroy's profanity-laden homemade t-shirts may inspire laughs, but never ridicule. As the workplace comedy of the early scenes gradually yields to an unsettling exploration of family and faith, the play builds to a finale that verges on rapture.
A Bright New Boise. Signature Theatre Company (Off Broadway). By Samuel D. Hunter. Directed by Oliver Butler. With ensemble cast. Running time: 1hr 40mins. No intermission.
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