Review of Little Bear Ridge Road, TheaterWorks Hartford
TheaterWorks has a knack for presenting quiet, dialogue-driven plays, thereby illuminating a variety of demographics. In Little Bear Ridge Road by Samuel D. Hunter, we're (as usual for the playwright) in rural Idaho, near the Washington border. It's the home of a woman in her sixties named Sarah Fernsby (Denise Cormier), but all we see is the plush couch and the overhead fan that comprise the set, backed by wonderfully varied and lovely projections on a rough, rocklike surface (Camilla Tassi, projections; Michael Schweikardt, set design). We're told the action takes place on "a couch in a void." The void isn't simply Idaho, but, as the play opens, the empty limbo time of the pandemic shutdowns in 2020.
Denise Cormier as Sarah, Mishka Yarovoy as Ethan in Little Bear Ridge Road, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Curtis Brown
Sarah, who lives on several acres and is a healthcare professional, is visited by her nephew, Ethan (Mishka Yarovoy), thirtyish, wearing a mask, who has come to dispose of the house and belongings of his recently deceased father, Sarah's brother, whom neither of them had much regard for. For Sarah, he was difficult to deal with as he sank into psychosis and death; for Ethan, he's an enduring ogre, a meth-addict who seems to live on endlessly as a burden of memory, a mix of outrage and loathing and possibly fear.
Watching Sarah and Ethan cope with being the last of the Fernsbys, bonding in little ways while also displaying how neither has much use for other people and only a grudging acceptance of one another is the main business of Hunter's play. The great strength of director Rob Ruggerio's fully achieved production is that Denise Cormier and Mishka Yarovoy are so well-cast, so perfectly calibrated in their timing of pauses, reactions and movement, and so engaging in their delivery of the terse and often overlapping dialogue. It's a fascinating pas de deux of two uncomfortable people gradually getting to the point where it's worth "having it out."
Mishka Yarovoy as Ethan, Denise Cormier as Sarah in Little Bear Ridge Road, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Curtis Brown
Denise Cormier keeps a lock on Sarah's crankiness but also shows her amusement at the failings of others. She's settled into her life, with her own issues, and is not keen to make herself an occasion for others' sympathy or interest. She gradually comes to accept not simply that Ethan has some value for her, but that she might meaning something to him. Key to Cormier's subtle performance is how far Sarah has to go to relinquish her hard-won independence. As she says, "I've had a long time to accept the person that I am." Even so, she still has to come to admit her own failings.
Mishka Yarovoy convincingly conveys not only Ethan's awkward charm, but his protective irony and his panic attacks. He fully inhabits a character who we might easily make light of as an ineffectual slacker with hopes far beyond his capacity, but Hunter's script ribs Ethan while giving him the earnest dignity of a work in progress.
Travis Anderson as James, Mishka Yarovoy as Ethan in Little Bear Ridge Road, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Curtis Brown
A budding love interest named James (Travis Anderson) is a rather undeveloped third wheel, but his presence is useful in letting us see Ethan interact with someone other than Sarah. The hookup that the two men try—at James' insistence—to make into "a date" is mainly just a pretext for exposition, but Yarovoy makes the most of it, exposing how needy Ethan truly is and how reticent to show it. Later, a lovers' quarrel that becomes a meltdown tests how far we're willing to indulge the lack of depth in Hunter's characters and risks becoming an exercise in petulance.
Cormier and Yarovoy so fully inhabit these parts that we're never bored with their limitations—their primary activity is watching a TV series called Extraterrestrials. Yes, watching TV together is a common bond, but going to the theater to watch people watch TV rather less so. Hunter keeps his characters close to a realism that means dialogue rarely ventures beyond the immediate occasion. He's an author who seems to congratulate himself on neat symbolic references, offering black holes, a hole in a living room (Cormier's handling of that speech indicates a direction the play could've gone if willing to detach a bit more from determined realism), the known and unknowable aspects of outer space, and the possibility of life on other worlds to give imaginative texture to his play. Mostly it works, obvious but unobtrusive. Helpful that James is studying astrophysics.
Mishka Yarovoy as Ethan, Denise Cormier as Sarah, Travis Anderson as James in Little Bear Ridge Road, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Curtis Brown
It all ties together neatly, even with a prose flourish (Ethan is a would-be fiction writer who says he has an MFA), read beautifully by a healthcare worker, Paulette (Janelle Anne Robinson). But the play's more literary effects distance us from some of the truths of the times the play ostensibly inhabits. We've got masks, briefly, and a few references to contact—like when it became OK to shake hands again—but no mention of death tolls (which persons with phones tended to track) or changing protocols. Sarah sounds off about the dehumanizing aspects of becoming a statistic on a medical chart, but as a health professional and given what the healthcare system went through 2020-21 we might expect something a little more nuanced. Too often the characters seem to live literally in a void (which would be fine if Hunter dispensed with the effort to tie the play to a definite timeframe with placenames specific enough to please, we imagine, an Idahoan). Non-familial interactions mostly happen with offstage voices (thank God for phones—and due credit to Travis Anderson's Kenny and Janelle Anne Robinson's Vickie).
We learn more about the characters, they learn more about themselves and each other. Key to all this is how human it is to want to be left alone, but also—with death and the indifference of the vasty reaches of the universe hanging over us—how lonely that alone can be. Sarah was prepared for that all along. Ethan gives her a respite that makes a difference in how she ends. To alter Hamlet: "the difference is all?"
Denise Cormier as Sarah, Mishka Yarovoy as Ethan in Little Bear Ridge Road, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Curtis Brown
Little Bear Ridge Road
By Samuel D. Hunter
Directed by Rob Ruggiero
Set Design: Michael Schweikardt; Costume Design: Risa Ando; Lighting Design: Matthew Richards; Sound Design: Minjae Kim; Projection Design: Camilla Tassi; Original Music: Billy Bivona; Hair: E. John McGarvey; Casting: Hardt Casting, LLC; Stage Manager: Tenley Pitonzo
Cast: Travis Anderson, Denise Cormier, Janelle Anne Robinson, Mishka Yarovoy
TheaterWorks Hartford
October 8-November 8, 2026