Broadway review by Adam Feldman
Vulnerability comes hard to Ethan (Micah Stock), a blocked gay writer in his 30s. He is a wounded soul, prickly and sour, with a defensive armor forged from serial abandonment: by his mother, who left when he was a child; by his father, a meth addict; and by his aunt, Sarah (Laurie Metcalf), whom he resents for not having done more to help. Sarah is a fortress unto her own: a gristly nurse at the end of her career who has moved to a very small town to be alone. (“Just—suits me better. Not being around—people.”) But when the two wind up sharing a home during the 2020 Covid shutdown, their mutual tenderness grows as they tough it out, filling time and space that otherwise feel emptier than ever.
Little Bear Ridge Road | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes
This is the universe of Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road, a gorgeous new drama whose touching central relationship coexists with a larger exploration of the intimate and cosmic. Hunter's clear-eyed portraits of pain and grace—including Greater Clements, Grangeville, The Few, The Harvest and The Whale—have consistently brightened Off Broadway seasons for the past 15 years. This production, directed with superb acerbity by Joe Mantello, marks the playwright's overdue Broadway debut, and it doesn’t disappoint. The play is a multifaceted gem, exquisitely shaped and cut, that shines out from the simplest of settings (designed by Scott Pask): a large greige recliner couch, set on a disc against a mostly black wall that doubles as a void.
Little Bear Ridge Road | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes
One of Hunter’s distinguishing features is his focus on a set of recurring subjects and elements, which he spins out in ever-surprising variations. Like usual, this play is set in rural Idaho—in this case a town called Troy (as in the ancient city, walled and besieged)—and centrally features a gay man still licking the wounds of growing up there. As in several past Hunter gatherings, this gay man is an aspiring but not quite accomplished artist: in this case, a writer who has blocked himself. “None of it is directly autobiographical but my main characters are based on parts of myself,” Ethan says. “But you don’t write anymore?” Sarah asks. “Yeah,” he replies. “I guess—I realized I didn’t like my main characters.”
Little Bear Ridge Road includes other signature Hunter preoccupations as well, including rigorously detailed depictions of financial and medical obstacles. But whereas many of his past plays wrestle with religious faith, this one pointedly does not; contrary to Ethan’s initial assumptions, Sarah is bluntly atheistic. (“All this time you’ve thought I had an issue with you being gay? That’s the most interesting thing about you.”) When Little Bear Ridge Road casts its gaze heavenward, it’s to the vast unknown.
Little Bear Ridge Road | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes
Astronomical themes pervade the play. When Ethan edges toward a romantic relationship, it’s with the sweet and patient James (an adorable John Drea), who is pursuing a master’s in astrophysics and instructs Ethan about the constellations, which are unusually visible so far from city lights. Black holes are a recurring trope; the Little Bear of the title, which is never mentioned in the text, obliquely evokes Ursa Minor. And when Ethan and Sarah begin to bond, it’s partly over a TV show called Extraterrestrial, which gives them something to talk about; the idea of life on other planets is a distraction from their own small orbits. She’s initially resistant to the series, mind you. “Just because it’s so complicated that you have to watch an episode recap every week doesn’t mean it’s better,” she complains. “Real people aren’t always desperately doing things.” Which is true: Sometimes, like Ethan and Sarah, they’re desperately doing nothing.
Little Bear Ridge Road | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes
This production benefits from stars of its own. Metcalf has dominated the Broadway stage for more than a decade, and she continues to astonish; her masterful timing delivers all the comedy that is built into Sarah—a snapping turtle with a manner so brusque she doesn’t even say goodbye at the end of phone calls—even as she conveys the hurt and affection beneath her emotional reticence. And Stock holds his own in an even trickier role, sustaining our sympathy though hairline cracks in his reflexive crabbiness. As these characters wrestle with guilt and love that they don’t know what to do with, Mantello stringently avoids sentimentality all the way though the beautiful final scene, in which a nurse (Meighan Gerachis) stumbles over a word in a way that wittily encapsulates one of the play’s major themes. A similar condensation happens earlier in the form of an insight by James about Orion’s Belt, which seems especially apt. Orion is, after all, the hunter; and with Little Bear Ridge Road, Hunter confirms his place in the firmament.
Little Bear Ridge Road. Booth Theatre (Broadway). By Samuel D. Hunter. Directed by Joe Mantello. With Laurie Metcalf, Micah Stock, John Drea, Meighan Gerachis. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
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Little Bear Ridge Road | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes
