Got dammit Samuel D. Hunter! How dare you write a world premiere play like Little Bear Ridge Road for original Steppenwolf Theatre Company ensemble member Laurie Metcalf, but then nudge its main focus more toward her co-star?!
Just kidding. I’m extremely grateful that Hunter (The Whale, A Bright New Boise) has written such an intimate and intensely moving drama with loads of laughs like Little Bear Ridge Road. It’s very fitting for Metcalf’s first return to Steppenwolf since her 2010 turn in Lisa D’Amour’s dark comedy Detroit.
From the first scene of Little Bear Ridge Road, Metcalf provides a master class in finessing the most humor out of Hunter’s insightful script. Gales of audience laughter can erupt from Metcalf delivering a line with an unexpected inflection, or just sarcastically raising one eyebrow.
But more importantly, Metcalf is equally at home conveying the simmering drama beneath the initially static surface of Little Bear Ridge Road. Metcalf is also a generous ensemble player who shines alongside her outstanding co-stars within director Joe Mantello’s spare and simple production.
Like much of Hunter’s previous plays, Little Bear Ridge Road is set in contemporary Idaho (specifically around 20-acre rural property near the towns of Troy and Moscow). It starts during the height of COVID-19 lock downs as the brusque nurse Sarah Fernsby (Metcalf) welcomes her drifting gay nephew, Ethan Fernsby (Tony Award nominee Micah Stock), into her home after a death in the family.
The deceased is Sarah’s brother and Ethan’s father, and there’s little love lost about him. Not only do we learn that he was a long-time meth addict, but the orphaned Ethan strongly suggests that his father spewed out a lot of homophobia when he was growing up.
Sarah and Ethan soon fall into a routine as time passes. Amid so much watching of TV, the two sometimes ponder their roles of the last two living members of the longtime Idaho Fernsby clan.
Ethan also suspects that Sarah is hiding something important from him. And Sarah starts to worry that Ethan is using his past and current traumas as excuses from finding love, steady work or his past creative passion to write “auto-fiction.”
As Ethan, Stock gives an honestly emotional (and gravelly voiced) performance of a troubled man in his 30s who is still wallowing in past hurts. These range from his controlling Seattle ex-boyfriend to a still-festering childhood plea for help. Stock’s unbolted bursts of jealousy and anger are also riveting and an unsettling window into Ethan’s soul.
While Stock’s Ethan and Metcalf’s Sarah are the central characters, they’re given great support in Little Bear Ridge Road by two ensemble members who double up as onstage folk and as off-stage phone voices. John Drea helps to lighten the sadness as James, an astrophysics grad student and potential love interest for Ethan (Drea is also fun as the biker friend Kenny). Meighan Gerachis is also solid in her small, but perfectly pitched performances as the nursing characters of Vickie and Paulette.
Scenery-wise, designer Scott Pask provides just the basics of a carpet circle, a textured back wall and a rotating couch to suggest multiple locations in Little Bear Ridge Road. But with the finely honed sound design of Mikhail Fiksel and Heather Gilbert’s focused lighting design, the acting performances all burst to the forefront so you don’t feel at all like you’re being theatrically undernourished.
For longtime Chicago theatergoers who have a history with Metcalf’s stage work, it’s greatly rewarding to have the celebrated Roseanne and The Connors sitcom star back home at Steppenwolf. This return for Metcalf is certainly triumphal, especially following her two Tony Awards wins on Broadway (Three Tall Women, A Doll’s House, Part 2) and also her fourth Emmy Award win for guest starring in HBO’s Hacks.
But though Metcalf may be the star or “name” attraction of Little Bear Ridge Road, she’s just part of the the all-around superlative acting ensemble that will likely linger on in your memory. That, and Hunter’s underlying message for the play.
With Little Bear Ridge Road, Hunter shows how people can be stuck in an unhappy stasis while lingering over an ongoing family crisis (or blaming the after-effects of an unexpected global pandemic). Being forced from that “safe” comfort zone can be painful and heartbreaking, especially when you soak in the play’s final tableau after such blistering performances from Metcalf and Stock.
Little Bear Ridge Road runs through Aug. 4 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St. For tickets, call 312-335-1650 or visit steppenwolf.org.