Little Bear Ridge Road, does something you rarely see in popular media these days. It reminisces on the period during and just after Covid. Somehow, collectively, we’ve silently agreed to just not talk about it anymore. We don’t want to relive it on TV, in books, or on the stage. The last ten years in this country will surely result in some great cinema in the future, but not yet. This topic has been on several people’s minds in my circles in the last few weeks. It keeps coming up. The national trauma we’ve endured has been suppressed and shuttered behind exhausted souls. Last night I got a hint as to why.
I think we had way too much time to think about ourselves during lockdown. Our relationships, our histories, and our futures, (which felt like a solid “maybe” at the time), were at the defendants’ table, and a lot of us could only hope for a plea deal. We’d become disconnected, reliant on corporations and their apps to access the simplest of routine services. We’d become compliant with the incessant data mining, exploitation, and manipulation by the very worst people in the entire world. We kept feeding ourselves to a beast that laughed at us while it chewed our bones.
And when it was over, the entire world was worse. All of our insights and wisdom gained were for nothing. Our trajectories were heading straight for the nearest iceberg, and none of us had enough energy to give a shit. As we crash, rupture, and submerge in 2026, do we need to be reminded of how we failed ourselves?
I have to admit, when the play opens and our protagonist, Matt Meixler’s Ethan, is wearing a mask, I felt a little triggered. Just the sight of the thing, mixed with the uneasy conversation, led to the inevitable question: “Is he going to wear that the whole performance?” Did the actor need it, or is this in the script?
The play opens with dialogue mirroring conversations I haven’t heard in the last four years but that were shockingly familiar. My mind wandered for a bit on these topics, but I brought myself back to the show before I missed anything important.
Besides the setting, the play isn’t about Covid. It involves the intersection of two estranged family members. Ethan, a middle-aged and displaced writer, is seeking closure on his father’s recent death and shelter with his only living relative, his longtime-estranged Aunt Sarah.
The duo recognize themselves as the last of the family line and explore what has led their once-thriving clan in rural Idaho to ruin. A new person comes into their lives and challenges their boundaries. The lost jobs, lost homes, cabin fever, dysregulated emotions, all of our favorite Covid memories, are back to poke you in the third eye again.
I’ll leave the rest of the plot for you to discover at the Theatre Gym, presented by Virginia Repertory Theatre, showing now through September 6. It’s a doozy.
I am proud of the company for getting the opportunity to stage this Tony-nominated work right after the closing of its immensely successful Broadway run. This is the first time it is being performed outside of New York City. Our local theatres keep giving Richmond reasons to embrace a sense of pride in our place in the national theatre conversation. They deserve praise for the wins we’ve seen lately.
Rick Hammerly is in the director’s chair again. He approaches the morass of metaphysical heartburn without a filter, letting the audience absorb the naturalistic realism of the script. Unvarnished. Everything that needs to be said out loud gets its aria.
The set is simply a couch one might find in your Idahoan aunt’s living room, placed on a lazy Susan. The different angles it displays to the stage, straight on, three-quarter profile, and from the rear, mark different places and moods, which I found subtly clever and worth a mention. Lighting is used judiciously, complementary to the spartan outfitting of the stage. Sound is a bigger feature here, as a decent portion of the show takes place with characters on the phone, nicely synced over the house system.
I caught the show opening night. As I’ve mentioned in several previous reviews, I try to give some grace on opening night. I also have a constant “you couldn’t do that” in my head as I critique. So take this as constructive, please. I am really good at noticing things, which, it turns out, is a marketable skill. An appreciated one, not so much. I felt a pang of “oh no…” during the first scene. It felt under-rehearsed. I hesitated to connect with characters that didn’t seem interested enough in connecting with each other. Yes, I know I am literally describing the subtext of the scene. It is that knowledge that made me more perplexed that I didn’t quite believe it was intentional.
Like two magnets slowly inching towards each other, at some point they just snapped together and never let go. Sometimes you need to let a cold engine warm up before it can drive.
Susan Sanford, a staple of Richmond theatre, has the best sarcasm game in town. She is perfect for the role. Her character, Sarah, is unused to guests and has a misanthropy deftly channeled by Sanford. I would have liked to see better use of quiet in line with the loud, barked dialogue that pervades the script. A few times in the first act, it felt too Roseanne Barr, an unrelenting stream of the same note at the same volume.
She had brilliant moments I would not dare disabuse her of, however. Within the first 20 minutes, she just became Sarah. Everything I could fault in the performance became simply the reasons Sarah, the character, is hard to get along with. Sanford got into Sarah’s skin a little after curtain rather than before, and that is the whole of that criticism.
Matt Meixler’s Ethan starts off with the same criticisms. The show just begins like a pie that needs ten more minutes in the oven. It finishes piping hot with melting ice cream on top. Ethan is a big reason why.
It is through him that all of the recalled dramas of the Covid era come back to haunt. Meixler created some beautiful layers for Ethan. There’s an insecurity balanced by a pragmatic sense of one’s own mediocrity that Meixler gets for Ethan. There’s a shame in his situation balanced by an anhedonia built on assured hopelessness. He fires off some intense monologues with Sarah. In one scene in particular, it seems luridly voyeuristic to even be overhearing their argument. You can forget yourself, as one does in the best of productions. His character’s “loud” moments, often the result of living on an emotional razor’s edge during the most stressful time in a generation, could benefit from some variety in intonation, but I want to be fair.
When my wife and I survived Covid in a tiny one-bedroom in Bed-Stuy, every stupid argument started and ended turned up to 11. Sometimes, you just need to scream. Even if it is about something trivial. The response isn’t tuned to the external conflict, but to the swirling rage at everything all at once that steeps inside you.
My criticism is from the perspective of an audience member hoping for a violin, not a crash cymbal. But for realism, I get it.
Axle Burtness’ James provides the third wheel in this play and is just as effective in stabilizing the story. His character bolts the family together in the service of something new, something representing hope. Axle graces James with such easy charm. He’s the new friendship in a bleak landscape, shuttered by fear and, in this family’s case, simple geographic isolation. James kinda just plops on the couch of their lives, and Burtness binds the whole thing together.
Alanna Wilson has a small but impactful role worth mentioning here, but in order not to spoil anything, I’ll be mum on that. She is absolutely believable in it, and that’s all that needs to be said about that.
All in all, if you love a good artistic gut punch, come and get one. This is the unfiltered Marlboro Red of experiences. It is intense. It is also beautiful, tender, and unexpected. It ends like a warm blanket and is well worth the clenched fists throughout.
Photos by Aaron Sutten
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