A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
by Samuel D. Hunter
Directed by Oliver Butler
Signature Theatre
Reviewed by David Spencer
A new employee is hired to be a cashier at an Idaho Hobby Lobby. For those who may only know that as the name of a national chain store not unlike Walmart, Hobby Lobby is famously a conservative Christian-run outfit. And while the new employee seems to be just a quiet guy needful of a job, what actually brings him here is that he has a troubled past—links to a notorious, now-defunct, religious cult. He wasn’t central to it (he insists, and it may be true, he was thoroughly investigated by the authorities), he was just caught up, but the tragedy behind its dissolution meant his losing touch with the wife who left him. Who, unbeknownst to him, was pregnant with a son he did not know of until recently. Subsequently adopted as a baby. And who is now, as a 13-year-old, working here. At the Hobby Lobby.
And what are the odds that his father holds yet another troubling secret anyway?
I’m a fan of playwright Samuel D. Hunter, and his ironically titled 2010 debut play, A Bright New Boise, having its NYC debut at the Signarure, is certainly the work of a talented voice…but I’m at a loss as to whether I can reliably tell you how worthwhile it is, because I didn’t much want to hang out with its folks.
The new guy (Peter Mark Kendall); the obnoxiously hyper-controlling kid (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio); the exasperated, curse-streaming boss (Eva Kaminsky); the young female employee with an open, questing spirit despite at least mental abuse at home (Anna Baryshnikov); the hulking, possibly over-protective adoptive older brother of the kid (Angus O’Brien)…none of them really develops. Rather, they reveal more details about themselves, making them more concentratedly what they were at the start, which isn’t quite the same thing—and they otherwise stick to their defining attitudes and behaviors throughout, bouncing off each other in various configurations until the big reveal…
…which isn’t even much of a reveal, it’s more a “relive” of something that’s already been related…
…and the end.
The play isn’t dull (much of the dialogue elicits intentional laughter) and in production concept and ensemble work, it’s about as well-directed (by Oliver Butler) as such a purposeful study in staticity can be. Which I guess all goes into the win column.
But its Hobby Lobby break room was not a place I wanted to spend time in, and I didn’t feel I was gaining insight or thematic riches for the effort.
But I’d also be hard pressed to mark A Bright New Boise as artistically falling short. I think it accomplishes exactly what it means to.
What it didn’t accomplish, and here I can only speak for myself, is making me care. And that may well be because of the hopelessness that permeates it. More specifically the nature of the hopelessness, and the social-cultural conditions that foster it.
But all key aspects of the human condition require dramatization by somebody, somewhere. Don’t they?
It’s just that not everybody, everywhere can be the audience for each worthy crack at it. Even among drama critics.
Your mileage may vary…