The screenplay for “Little Bear Ridge Road” by Samuel D. Hunter states that the play takes place “on a couch in a void.” When the lights come on, we see it – a white leather monstrosity with separate built-in recliners – and we see emptiness too. Otherwise, the scene is completely bare.
The room takes full metaphorical advantage of the sofa and the void. Featuring the collision of a reluctant aunt (Laurie Metcalf) and her life-stuck nephew (Micah Stock) in the early days of COVID, Hunter’s screenplay is set in a historical moment when sitting on a couch was all many people had. As for the void? Well, those familiar with Hunter’s past work (which includes “The Whale,” which Hunter later adapted for film, and “A Bright New Boise”) won’t be surprised that Stock’s Ethan is a man more comfortable with words than others, desperate to escape the American interior but unsure how to do it. All he sees around him is inky darkness.
Ethan showed up distraught at his aunt’s door: his father has died and Ethan is forced to sell his house and carry out the administrative tasks that come with mourning. Not that Ethan is exactly grieving – he and Aunt Sarah seem to agree that nothing of value was lost when Ethan’s father, a drug addict, died, but now Sarah and Ethan are the last two members of the Fernsby family. The two remaining Fernsbys have seen better days: Ethan’s attempt to settle down in Seattle met an embarrassing end, while Sarah has consciously retreated further to her corner of Idaho, living a half-hour from the nearest grocery store and tethered to the world around her only by a reality TV habit. Ethan is embarrassed, but Sarah, at least, isn’t homophobic; she’s stunned, in fact, to learn that Ethan feared she might be. “All this time you thought I had a problem with you being gay?” she asks. “That’s the most interesting thing about you.”
Another actor might play a moment of regret after uttering this, but Metcalf, directed by Joe Mantello, is all momentum, in conversation and otherwise. She strides around the couch, supporting her lower back with her right hand, as if moving it might disintegrate completely. Unlike her disgruntled nephew, she does not consider herself to have this luxury.
It’s a stark contrast between personality types and, perhaps, generations: the stoicism and the angst, sharing the couch together. And Sarah and Ethan’s gradual understanding, and toward a moment where they can talk openly about missed opportunities for connection in the past, makes for moving viewing; I was reminded, at times, of Jen Silverman’s “The Roommate,” staged last year on Broadway and also concerned with two unlikely life companions trying to reconcile. But there are elements here that don’t really add up. Hunter, in writing a protagonist no different than those he’s written in the past, first uses a kind of shorthand: Ethan is unhappy because, well, what’s the point of being happy? – but as the details of Ethan’s life accumulate, elements (including and especially his life in Seattle) strain credulity. Ethan, we are told, dreams of becoming a writer, and yet his attitude never strikes the viewer as particularly writerly or thoughtful: Stock gives an overly emphatic performance. Every word he says is capitalized.
Metcalf fares better; the play was commissioned from him as a way to return to Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company last year, and one imagines Hunter envisioning “a Laurie Metcalf type” as he wrote. (Stock was also in that Chicago production, for what that’s worth.) Sarah exists on a continuum with all of Metcalf’s great characters, from the outspoken aunt (again!) in “Roseanne” to Lady Bird’s mother to the recent series of women she played on Broadway, hurt but trying to hide their hurt behind some bravado. (Nora in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” comes to mind. As does the defeated politician in “Hillary and Clinton.”)
The moments of great emotion in “Little Bear Ridge Road” don’t exactly fall flat, but they don’t play up Hunter’s strengths as a writer; he is better at small wrong gestures. We casually learn something about Sarah as Ethan talks about his family situation on a date with kindly grad student James (John Drea), and the power of this news dawning on the public outweighs the excoriations Ethan utters about his upbringing.
The show is at its best when it allows Ethan and Sarah’s relationship to unfold without forcing revelations. (Lead producer Scott Rudin, returning to the industry after a four-year hiatus following reports of an alleged system of bullying his subordinates, can at least be seen as having long had an eye for the truly literary, which this series achieves at its best; perhaps, too, a story about trying to right possible past misdeeds had its appeal.) The couple’s misunderstandings early on, before a torrent of discussion about what Sarah could have done differently to protect one’s nephew, may be a relatively small beer, but I found myself more interested in the small nuances of the differences between aunt and nephew than in the cosmic questions of what is owed to a family member. After all, the former informs the latter in a way that is intellectually satisfying to delve into; the latter lends itself to greatness.
One of the best moments of the series, namely, comes during a conversation between the two housemates about what they like to watch on TV. Ethan loves anti-hero dramas in the post-“Sopranos” vein, and I told myself to roll my eyes at an industry satire that would probably be less than subtle. But what happened next was a strange and sad little moment. Sarah says: “Just because it’s so complicated to have to watch an episode recap every week doesn’t mean it’s better. Real people aren’t always desperate. TO DO things.”
It begins as a groan that could have been uttered at any time in this century. But it ends with a statement of intent — and one that, in the show’s loudest moments, I wish Hunter had taken more to heart. Sarah is from the same family as Ethan, has experienced the same problems, and lives a life of similar isolation and lack of fulfillment, and yet what can she do? With her hand behind her back, she continues to move forward. She struggles to express her love, but — in one of the many small, poignant moments that run through “Little Bear Ridge Road” and distinguish it as a significant achievement — she refuses to show herself. She can’t really say she loves her nephew, but she can do the next best thing. Sarah is not interested in what Ethan has on the TV set, but she tells her story about it, and then, sitting next to him in emptiness, continues to watch with him.
