Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Crises of faith and family: Samuel D. Hunter’s A BRIGHT NEW BOISE and Anna Ziegler’s THE WANDERERS

• By drediman
• February 23, 2023
• No Comments

Currently Off-Broadway, you can find a pair of plays that examine cases of simultaneous crises of faith and family. Here are my thoughts, per usual.

A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
Signature Theatre Company at the Pershing Square Signature Center
Through March 12

This week, Signature Theatre Company’s Off-Broadway revival of Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (RECOMMENDED) opened at the Pershing Square Signature Center. One of the benefits of Signature’s residency programming is getting the opportunity to assess a playwright’s evolution within the context of their body of work. Given their thematic common ground, it’s particularly illuminating to be able to set Hunter’s 2010 work alongside last year’s A Case for the Existence of God (both deal with the struggle to find meaning in seemingly dead end existences). Even if the more overtly caustic and histrionic Boise — which at its core depicts the strained relationship between an Evangelical Christian and his mentally troubled son — doesn’t quite have the subtle, elegant maturity of Proof, it’s nonetheless fascinating to witness the promising seeds of what will eventually bloom into something more exquisite, especially with respect to the playwright’s musings on the impact of faith on familial relations. Unsurprisingly, Signature’s tautly-acted Oliver Butler-helmed revival of Boise is a polished affair through and through.

THE WANDERERS
Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre
Through April 2

Also currently on the boards of Off-Broadway’s Laura Pels Theatre is Anna Ziegler’s new play The Wanderers (RECOMMENDED), which comes to New York courtesy of Roundabout Theatre Company (the play was previously presented in San Diego by the Old Globe). Largely set in Brooklyn, the work tells the parallel stories of two married couples — one, a secular modern day couple (both husband and wife are writers, by the way) who have chosen to downplay their Jewish heritage; the other, a Jewish Orthodox couple (the husband’s parents) who navigate their faith vis-a-vis establishing a family during the early 20th century. Suffice to say, each couple encounters bumps — their troubles are not mutually exclusive, despite the many years that separate them — that threaten the well-being of the relationships. As such, Ziegler’s play takes a more indirect and inter-generational approach in its consideration of the traumatic effects of religion on family dynamics. Along the way, the playwright blurs fact with fiction in interesting ways. Although the play ends a tad too neatly, I found the central twist of the play to be a marvelous theatrical decvice and Barry Edelstein overall production to be solidly acted (the cast features film star Katie Holmes) and squarely on point.