Samuel D. Hunter’s latest begins as a very funny two-hander comedy in which Laurie Metcalf plays another of her sharp-tongued curmudgeons and Micah Stock brings to the stage a more svelte version of Brendan Fraser’s obese recluse from “The Whale,” also by Hunter. We know Metcalf can be a hilarious bitch. What’s fun is that Stock’s tortured schlub of a nephew turns out to be just as skilled at throwing the insults back at her.
That’s the very good news about Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road,” which opened Thursday at the Booth Theatre after its 2023 world premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre.
Imagine if Elaine May and Mike Nichols had grown up on a ranch in rural Idaho, where “Little Bear Ridge Road” is set. That’s the kind of top-notch witty repartee Hunter gives his two characters, although “raunchy” perhaps should replace “witty.” Pulling the strings is director Joe Mantello, who knows just how to stage a great sparring match for maximum entertainment.
When Aunt Sarah sticks it to Nephew Ethan, it is only a matter of seconds before he’s going to toss it right back. Sarah and Ethan are what’s left of their family tree, and the two remaining apples are indeed rotting near each other on the ground. A critic could load his review with all the zingers, but here’s just one that comes at the top of the show: When the nephew tells his aunt that he felt she never liked him because he’s gay, she says, in so many other words, that his being gay is the only thing interesting about him.
The sharp comedy doesn’t stop when a third character enters the picture. He’s James (John Drea, being handsome, agreeable and charming to a fault) whom Ethan meets at a bar, thinking it is a quick hookup for sex. James, on the other hand, thinks it’s a date, as in drinks and some conversation first. James is not as sharp with the retorts; in fact, he doesn’t retort at all, leaving that edginess to Ethan, who proves as expert at putting down James, whom he has just met, as he is fighting with his aunt. Ethan Cohen’s recently opened comedy “Let’s Love!” features the Worst First Date Ever. Hunter gives us the gay version.
But it’s here that “Little Bear Ridge Road” veers off its expertly laid pavement. In the previous scene between nephew and aunt, we learn that Ethan’s former boyfriend was a corporate lawyer in Seattle. In the gay bar scene, James lets us know he’s studying to be an astrophysicist.
An astrophysicist?!
If a self-professed loser like Ethan, who’s a failed writer and makes a habit of showing off his portly gut, can attract not only a corporate lawyer but a guy who is studying to be an astrophysicist, why is anyone living anywhere but the country’s northwest, where, according to “Little Bear Ridge Road,” anyone can score? Maybe Hunter made this featured character a future astrophysicist because it allows James to deliver very deep and equally dull statements about the cosmos, in particular, Orion’s Belt. Unfortunately, all this humorless talk about the stars is a lot less interesting than anything Ethan and Sarah say to lacerate each other. Suddenly, where is the Mantello of the play’s first third? Why let this scene turn pathetically sweet?
The Orion’s Belt comments prefigure all sorts of big discussions to come about cancer and meth addiction and child abuse. They are the same tropes that other, lesser playwrights stick in their plays to give them meaning. Myself, I was happier when “Little Bear Ridge Road” wasn’t pretending to be anything more than a hilarious comedy about yet another dysfunctional family.
