Unlike THE WHALE, Samuel D.
Hunter’s fascinating play of last season about a 600-pound man, there are no
physically unusual specimens of humanity on display in his poignantly dramatic but
occasionally hilarious new romantic anti-romantic work, THE FEW, directed by
Davis McCallum at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. THE FEW received its
world premiere at the Old Globe in San Diego last year, also with Mr. McCallum
at the helm. Like THE WHALE, however, the central concern of this 85-minute, intermissionless piece is the need of an
emotionally wounded man to reach out and find some sort of redemption for his
past behavior and to reconnect with someone from whom he’s been estranged. THE
FEW is about caring, and how essential it is to have others in our lives, even
at the expense of pain and disappointment.
Michael Laurence, Gordon Glick. Photo: Joan Marcus.
The man in question, Bryan
(Michael Laurence), is a scruffy ex-trucker who cofounded a trucker’s newspaper,
The Few, in northern Idaho, with
his friend Jim and a woman named QZ (Tasha Lawrence). Its inspiration was the
belief that long-range driving causes truckers (like Jim and Bryan) to lose the
very sense of their existence (“Like you’re never in one place long enough even
to exist”), while the sense of communion with other humans gradually vanishes.
Such feelings of alienation, of which Jim especially was a victim, needed to be
expressed in a way that spoke directly to truckers and let them know they
existed. But, after Jim’s death (the truth about which comes out in a big reveal), Bryan suddenly left
for parts unknown, leaving the paper and a load of debt in the hands of the broken-hearted QZ, who loved him.
Michael Laurence. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Now, after four years, Bryan has
returned, unannounced, claiming he's broke and in need of a place to stay. It’s August
1999, a time of potential chaos mingled with the promise of a new millennium; this
was when the world feared the
possible effect of the Y2K bug. QZ, who has been having an epistolary
relationship with a certain Rick, who proposed to her, is upset by
Bryan’s presence, but she allows him to sleep at the office for a few days
(although he claims legal ownership of the place). During his absence, QZ hired a teenage geek,
the nervously nerdy Matthew (Gordon Glick), a gay 19-year-old who got
interested in The Few because of
Bryan’s columns and has long idolized him.
QZ
has managed to make the paper profitable by abandoning trucker stories and
emphasizing instead personal ads. Throughout
the play, the answering machine keeps playing messages left by those placing
ads, each of which, in its own way, underlines the sense of loneliness
pervading the lives of Bryan, QZ, and Matthew. The messages often serve as a
mildly ironic counterpoint to the regular dialogue. Bryan, who smokes and
drinks, does his best to ignore, even snub Matthew (who claims to be allergic
to tobacco and alcohol). But, much as Bryan might like him to disappear,
Matthew shyly\slyly manages to stick around. Matthew, who has a poetic streak
of his own, wants Bryan to write essays for truckers that would return the paper
to its original purpose; he believes Bryan spent the past four years gathering
material about the heart of America.
Eventually, Bryan will confess the real
reason for his return; Matthew, who will take matters into his own hands using a BB gun, will learn some life lessons; Bryan and QZ will tussle
over their different visions of the paper and their personal relationship; a
jug of antifreeze will join the action; and people will keep calling The Few as—like Matthew, Bryan, and QZ—they
reach out for someone to love. One such caller provides the play with
what reads in the script like an optimistic ending; in Mr. McCallum’s staging, however, the result is ambiguous.
The
Rattlestick often provides sets of greatly detailed naturalism, such as the one
designed by Dane Laffrey for THE FEW. It shows the newspaper office, a shabby
affair, stained ceiling and all, located in what could be a truck’s disused
trailer. The joint is overflowing with office junk, including big old computer
monitors. A red floppy disk even makes its appearance at one
point. Aiding and abetting this thoroughly convincing interior
is the sensitive lighting of Eric Southern, giving a true sense of the always
changing time of day. Jessica Pabst's costumes and Daniel Kluger's music and sound design round everything out perfectly.
Mr.
Hunter’s vernacular is crisp, smart, and authentic-sounding in the mouths of
whoever speaks it, including the wide variety of people leaving personal ads ,
some of them unsure of how to do so. This one closes scene 3: “It’s,
uh—. Wait what am I supposed to—? Uh, Trent, I’m in—. Why do you need my phone
number? Look don’t print my name. Truckers call me Bent Nickel, just print
that. No, uh, actually don’t print that, just print—hot trucker. Print hot
trucker seeking—” And those with fully prepared statements are always oddly
realistic enough to capture your attention: “Montana, 406-343-2043, my name’s Jessie.
Full-figured woman with big breasts looking for man. Just got out of an L-T-R,
looking to start a new one. I don’t know how to swim. Send me a message and we
will meet and see what happens. Please only men interested in large-breasted
women.”
Mr.
Laurence acts Bryan with much the same haunted sense of disillusion, depression, and
self-loathing that Jon Hamm brings to “Mad Men.” Having returned to his former
job and partner in obvious distress, and given the chance to work (with
reduced authority), Bryan struggles to retain his sense of dignity even when
suffering abject humiliation, although this forces him to be crueler to Matthew
than he intends. Gordon Glick’s Matthew is a bundle of physical and verbal tics
that vividly express his awe of Bryan, his repressed ideals, and his ultimate
loss of control. And the feisty Ms. Lawrence’s QZ is every bit the cynic whose heart was
crushed when Bryan left following Jim’s funeral and who refuses to let it happen
again.
Michael Laurence, Tasha Lawrence. Photo: Joan Marcus.