LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD: Samuel D. Hunter’s Existential Idahoans Make It to Broadway — Review
Ah, Steppenwolf, if only you could open a New York City branch and treat us to your consistent brand of unfussy, salt-of-the-earth great American theater. That’s what the Chicago-based company has become synonymous with and its latest import, Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road, continues to uphold that level of quality. (And if there’s a certain producer also making his Broadway return with this production, I’ll just say that their baseline level of theatrical competence, much like Steppenwolf’s, has been sorely missed.)
Hunter, as is his wont, returns to his bread and butter of emotional types wasting away in the apparent existential cul-de-sac that is his native Idaho. Here it’s Ethan (Micah Stock), a thirty-something, would-be gay writer who returns to his rural hometown during the early-ish months of the Covid lockdown to settle his dead father’s estate. Ethan’s not thrilled to be back, but what else was he doing? He’s been living in his car after dumping his lawyer boyfriend in Seattle. His aunt Sarah (Laurie Metcalf), a nurse clinging to what few shifts she can since her hospital was sold to a for-profit company, clocks this immediately. She also asks him to take off his face mask (worn half for health, half in condescension) if he’s going to be crashing at hers while they sort everything out. Of course, that process takes longer than expected.
Metcalf, unsurprisingly, is excellent, and you can picture what kind of woman Sarah is: a no-nonsense, ostensibly conservative but ultimately pure Heartlander. That Metcalf has so nailed down this character type yet continues to surprise and inspire with her acting choices is a testament to how deeply she digs into her characters. An early retort, after Ethan assumes she’ll be as toxically homophobic as his addict father:
“All this time you’ve thought I had an issue with you being gay? That’s the most interesting thing about you.”
Her Sarah is quick to attack, permanently stanced up even if on FaceTime, and the bad hip Metcalf gives her is both commedia dell’arte and American healthcare tragedy.
Stock’s Ethan is somewhat of the same. He takes a big swing towards the unlikable, and his pathetic demeanor riskily gives the appearance of a poor performance. It is anything but, and more actors should shed their ego in service of their play as readily as Stock. His side of the duet is leavened by the introduction of James (John Drea, near-revelatory in how he holds his own), a nerdy graduate student who very slowly breaks into his heart.
The actor Meighan Gerachis also appears, briefly but heartrendingly, late in the play.
Little Bear Ridge Road is unassuming, intimate, honest and memorable without insisting upon itself, especially under Joe Mantello’s human direction. Save for a quietly gorgeous moment when Heather Gilbert lights the back wall to evoke a night sky, Scott Pask’s set is barely more than a couch on a slightly elevated platform, and Jessica Pabst’s costumes are dutifully well-observed. It all works.
Had I not seen Grangeville at the Signature Center earlier this year, I might have qualms with Hunter retreading familiar territory. (Road premiered in Chicago in 2024.) Gifted though he might be, there’s only so much to be mined from a hypothetical scenario where one stays behind instead of going onto fantastic success as a celebrated playwright. But Grangeville denoted a new turn inward, critiquing the very penchant for self-pitying art that got him where he is. And Little Bear Ridge Road, despite Hunter’s status as a premiere writer for over a decade, is somehow his first on Broadway. There’s hardly a better one to leave his mark on the neighborhood and, at least with this production, save it from becoming the existential cul-de-sac it threatens to become.
Little Bear Ridge Road is in performance through February 15, 2026 at the Booth Theatre on West 45th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
