A few months back I posted on Steppenwolf Theatre's outstanding production of Brandon Jacobs Jenkins' new play "Purpose." Well Steppenwolf has hit the theatrical jackpot once again with its world premiere of Samuel D. Hunter's perfectly written and staged new play "Little Bear Ridge Road."
"Little Bear," like nearly all of Hunter's plays, is set in his home state of Idaho, and focuses on the reunion of an aunt (played by the estimable Laurie Metcalf) and her estranged gay nephew (Micah Stock) after the passing of the nephew's troubled father. Both main characters are complicated, difficult, misundertood, commitment-phobic and stubborn, yet both engender deep audience empathy while they navigate serious societal issues, all done with an incredible amount of humor. I cannot imagine a better acted and directed (by Joe Montello) production would be possible, and sincerely hope this play with at least these two actors and director make their way to New York soon.
With "Little Bear" and "Purpose" Steppenwolf has gifted Chicago audiences the two best new American plays thus far of 2024. Both have played to sold out audiences over the course of several extensions of the initially scheduled run. It is heartening to see serious, challenging new dramas succeed artistically, critically and financially for one of the country's finest non-profit theaters.
Over at the Goodman Theatre, the world premiere musical adaptation of John Berendt's best selling non-fiction Savannah set book "Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil" is playing through August 11. The show is uniquely structured thanks to Taylor Mac's funny and inventive book, and features a fine, lyrically textured and style-varied Jason Robert Brown score. The star of the show is unquestionably J. Harrsion Ghee as The Lady Chablis, and the sizing up of their character's role as compared with the book is considerable and well justified. I admire the risks taken in adapting the somewhat unweildy book for the stage, and in its current state this is a very entertaining new musical. However, there is work to be done to provide more focus to the stories being told, which I would guess is especially confusing to audience members who have not read the book. I hope to see a more refined version of this show in the future.
Finally, I give props to suburban Chicago's Writers Theater for staging Katori Hall's Pulitzer winning play "Hot Wing King," a comedy about a group of black gay males set in Memphis. I loved this play in a prior production I saw just before the 2020 Covid shutdown, and had high hopes for seeing the play again. Unfortunately, this production handles the dramatic elements of the play much better than the comedic elements, which I attribute to comedic acting deficiencies in one of the key roles. This resulted in a play that felt off balance in the first act, but there was redemption to be found in the much better performed second act.
