Evenings on the prairie are relatively quiet for Peg, a recently widowed woman in rural Wisconsin who still cooks for two. Which doesn’t go to waste whenever Ryan, a dear friend with a troubled past, pays her a visit. However, after noticing her husband’s toolbox is missing, she places a call to the local authorities—unwittingly setting off a series of events that will forever reverberate through the small community. In a divided country where the lines separating family, friend, and foe have been further blurred in the wake of a global pandemic, Tony Award® winner Robert Falls and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Gilman masterfully unweave a complex, humanistic yarn the Chicago Sun-Times calls "an engrossing work of intense melancholy, filled with sympathy for its characters, and for the country."
Through her deft cross-pollination of tragedy, character study, and old-fashioned drama, what emerges is a moving portrait of quiet lives made to growl loudly into an abyss encroaching from all sides, and a call for remembrance of the comfort we might find in one another.
One caveat I have is the final scene, a de rigueur resolution after a punishing climax which borders on pat. Tragedies can end at an unbearable apex of sorrow or offer a healing postscript. In his pre-pandemic shocker Greater Clements, Samuel D. Hunter went with the former. Sweat (2015), by Lynn Nottage, ended in grimness but with a glimmer of shared humanity. Gilman comes down solidly for forgiveness and closure (there’s even a joke related to cremains and seeds). I didn’t entirely buy it tonally (despite tender performances) and it left a bland aftertaste, but I will admit: if the choice is between giving up or going on, we should arc toward hope.
2023 | Off-Broadway |
Audible Theater Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play | Bubba Weiler |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting Design of a Play | Eric Southern |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Play | Rebecca Gilman |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Direction of a Play (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Robert Falls |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in an Off-Broadway Play | Bubba Weiler |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Lead Performer in an Off-Broadway Play | Mary Beth Fisher |
2024 | The Lortels | Outstanding Featured Performer in a Play | Bubba Weiler |
2023 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in an Off-Broadway Play | Bubba Weiler |
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