'Little Bear Ridge Road' review: Stellar cast, captivating writing combine for brilliant show at Steppenwolf

The notion of a Samuel D. Hunter play starting during the COVID-19 pandemic seems natural, since the MacArthur genius grant winner has previously pondered people with proclivities towards social isolation. His most famous character to date, in his play “The Whale,” was a man whose unmanageable obesity served in part to give him reason for never leaving his chair. Brendan Fraser earned a best actor Oscar for the film version.

When we meet the two main characters of Hunter's newest work “Little Bear Ridge Road” — now receiving its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre — we know they’re not the most, shall we say, people-friendly people. Sarah (the always welcome, unsurprisingly magnificent Steppenwolf ensemble member Laurie Metcalf) has moved a half-hour away from the nearest city — which would be Moscow, Idaho (population about 25,000) — because she says, even fewer people “suits me better.” Ethan (the less-familiar and shockingly terrific Micah Stock) seems to assume people disapprove of him, perhaps a remnant of growing up gay in religious territory. He’s surprised to hear that Sarah doesn’t have an issue when he mentions his sexuality.

Ethan has driven from Seattle to Idaho upon the death of his father, an incorrigible meth addict and Sarah’s brother. Sarah notices that Ethan seems to have all his belongings in his barely running car.

But there’s a sense of hope, if that’s what you can call a glimmer of mutual connection, that this mostly estranged aunt and nephew can find some comfort in each other. By the end of the first scene, two things have happened. Sarah has invited Ethan to stay in her guest room while he arranges to sell his father’s house, and Ethan has removed his face mask.

“There you are,” Sarah says.

There seems a possibility of reconciliation, shared mourning. Maybe, eventually, they’ll even smile.

But this is a Hunter play, and as such almost inexorably an exploration of self-loathing, loneliness, inertia, unresolvable trauma, existential perplexity. People are like deep, bottomless holes of unfillable, unspeakable emotional need. That hole metaphor is emphasized here both by references to astrophysics and by the round circle of carpet that forms the base of Scott Pask’s ultra-minimal set design, which contains only that carpeting, a couch and a back wall that’s lit up at times to suggest the vastness of space, very visible in this part of Idaho where it’s a half-hour drive to the nearest store.

Meaningful conversation between the two is constantly challenging, halting. They watch TV hoping to find something they can talk about and, tellingly, end up watching a show they both mostly hate. But it’s easier than anything personal. Sarah keeps the biggest news in her life secret.

In one of the play’s many amusing moments — the production’s ability to find humor amid human awkwardness is endless — Stock squirms with his entire body when Sarah queries Ethan about his love life. Asked why he doesn’t write even though he went to school for fiction, Ethan’s general answer is, “I don’t know,” while his more specific response is that he writes about aspects of himself, but “I realized I didn’t like my main characters.”

The surprising honesty of that admission makes it funny, even though it isn’t. But it is.

When the characters do start to become more open with each other, it only gets more complicated. The entire play captures the intense contradiction of how people need to rely on others, yet either resent it or lose themselves in dependence, or both.

This is a deeply beautiful piece of writing, bleakly funny, poetic in its plainness, aching in its intense empathy for the characters, brought to brilliant life, and eventually explosive drama, by Metcalf and Stock under the precise, elegant direction of Joe Mantello.

It’s not perfect. The title of the play remains puzzling, and, although it may have personal meaning to Hunter (it relates to his own father's home and where he drafted the play), it's not evocative on its own. One of two supporting characters — James (an appealing John Drea), a love interest for Ethan — feels fundamentally over-idealized, a type of hope personified in a play that isn’t stylized enough for such a symbol.

But throughout, Metcalf and Stock provide a constant source of fascination, so exact in their differentiation between what they know they should say and what they do say, so dour and yet so comic simultaneously. Stock is such a revelation here, wearing Ethan’s raw pain on the outside, so exposed and yet also so invulnerable.

I don’t remember the last time I cared about characters this much.