“Only connect,” wrote the novelist E.M. Forster, “Live in fragments no longer.”
Ah, but that’s easier said than done, E.M., particularly in the windblown wilds of the Western U.S., the so-called “empty corridor”, and particularly among the men and women who make it their profession to drive trucks across the country. It is so difficult, in fact, that when Bryan (Baakari Wilder), his lover QZ (Dawn Thomas Reidy) and the late Jim try to make a place for truckers who want to talk to each other — a physical home first, and then a newspaper (called The Few) — they not only fail, but find their own solidarity demolished. When Jim dies, Bryan takes off for parts unknown, leaving QZ with the melancholy task of holding their sodden dream together, or finding some other way to make it work.
As we begin, it is the eve of the millennium, and Bryan has returned. QZ is not pleased. In his absence, she has transformed the paper into the most practical forum for confronting loneliness conceivable: an extended personals column where truckers can, in blunt and humble terms, bargain for love. (“Me: over sixty,” is the voice-mail message left by a trucker who is particularly assured of his leverage. “You: under forty.”) She has taken Jim’s nephew Matthew (Andrew Flurer) on as help, and for once, the paper is paying for itself.
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Bryan has left for no reason QZ can discern, and now, four years later, has returned for no apparent reason — except for the fact that his name is on the deed to the paper’s ramshackle office, and to the land and trailers outside. Yet here he is, trying to shame her into returning The Few to its idealistic roots, where loneliness is conquered through poetic essays and emotional growth, not by $30 human want ads. Matthew, stuffed with romantic thoughts about his uncle and the newspaper, is on his side, but QZ, who has earned the moral if not the legal upper hand, is having none of it. Bryan can stay — to help lay out and distribute her paper.
The action all takes place within The Few’s miserable office, but Alison Mark’s set manages to invoke the desolation in all the empty spaces between people. The phone calls come in from Utah, Nevada, Oregon, North Carolina (The Few’s office is in Northern Idaho) — all pleading for connection, almost all bound for disappointment. (Reidy, who also serves as casting director, assembles a fine collection of local actors for the off-stage voices; Audrey Cefaly, a playwright, is particularly notable as a woman so humiliated by what she is doing that she asks that her message be deleted).
The Few from Unexpected Stage closes August 4, 2019. Details and tickets
Playwright Sam Hunter has mined these themes before — most spectacularly in A Bright New Boise, which played at Woolly eight years ago. This is a more subdued play, which depends on powerful acting to help us past the implausibilities. Fortunately for us, Unexpected Stage gives it to us. Reidy is particularly compelling: animated by rage, she allows her hurt and tenderness to rise to the surface at crucial moments. At the beginning of the play you are afraid of her; by the end, you are afraid for her.
When Wilder first appears, his Bryan seems like a boxer who has lost the will to defend himself, and you keep looking for the referee. QZ rains blow after blow on his unprotected head, and he blinks and nods and utters monosyllabic response. When I saw this play done in development six years ago, the actor playing Bryan maintained this hangdog attitude for most of the play, but here Wilder, after weathering the storm of QZ’s rage, shows us the passion and arrogance which would normally characterize someone with such outsized ambitions. He and director Christopher Goodrich have made the right choice here; it makes his breakdown confession at the play’s climax more compelling.
Plus — he plays a drunk as well as anyone I’ve ever seen. Having converted a fifth of Jack into a twentieth of Jack with astonishing speed, Bryan must be near catatonia, yet deliver a monologue of some seven minute’s length. This is not Who’s-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf drunk. This is take-me-to-the-hospital drunk, yet you do not miss a single word of his speech. And when, the next day, he throws the remainder of the bottle out, you understand exactly why.
Hunter doesn’t give Flurer’s Matthew as much to play with, but the actor acquits himself honorably. Matthew is pretty much a one-note character; a timid, callow, hero-worshiping kid whose one moment of assertiveness comes straight out of desperation. Flurer keeps the character under control, reminding us that Matthew is a decent young man, and we don’t end up worrying about how he will take care of himself when the story is over.
If you want to take a look at the big picture — and, really, who doesn’t? — The Few stands in for the artist’s task. QZ and Bryan struggle to create something that bridges loneliness, while struggling with their alienation from each other. So, too, do Hunter, and Edward Albee, and August Wilson and Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf and Salvador Dali and Charlie Parker struggle to make us look hard into our common humanity. It’s hard being human with each other. But it’s not impossible.
The Few by Sam Hunter . directed by Christopher Goodrich . Featuring Andrew Flurer, Dawn Thomas Reidy, and Baakari Wilder . Production manager: Shayla Sowers . Fight director: Mallory Shear . Set designer: Alison Mark . Lighting designer: Andrew Dodge . Sound designer and video editor: Matthew Mills . Props master: John Barbee . Costume designer: Carrie Kirby . Stage manager: Margo Weill . Produced by Unexpected Stage Company . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
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