Review Roundup: Signature Theatre Presents A BRIGHT NEW BOISE

Signature Theatre presents the Off-Broadway premiere of Samuel D. Hunter's 2011 Obie Award-winning dark comedy A Bright New Boise, directed by Oliver Butler, running through March 12 in the Pershing Square Signature Center's Irene Diamond Stage (480 W 42nd St, New York).

A Bright New Boise boldly mines themes that would become integral to Hunter's work, particularly the search for divinity and intimacy and the question of how the social and physical architectures of late capitalism create a breeding ground for American zealotry.

Will (Peter Mark Kendall) has fled his northern Idaho hometown and found a new community in the artificially bright break room of his new Boise workplace, a Hobby Lobby craft-supply chain store. But there are other reasons he's chosen to make a fresh start for himself in the world of this specific big box store: one recent scandalous tragedy and another from long ago involving a new coworker. Will's presence-the past that sticks to him, the grandiosity of his troubled faith, the weight of his hunger to connect-threatens to throw the sanctuary of the Hobby Lobby ecosystem into chaos.

A Bright New Boise's cast includes Anna Baryshnikov (Anna), Ignacio Diaz-Silverio (Alex), Eva Kaminsky (Pauline), Peter Mark Kendall (Will), and Angus O'Brien (Leroy). The creative team includes Wilson Chin (Scenic Design), April M. Hickman (Costume Design), Jen Schriever (Lighting Design), Christopher Darbassie (Sound Design), Stefania Bulbarella (Projection and Video Design), and Caparelliotis Casting (Casting).

Read the reviews:

Jesse Green, The New York Times: It's a mark of Hunter's patient construction that these Big Issues are usually rooted deeply in the plot, not sprinkled on top of it. In one of the play's best scenes, Alex, freaking out over a $187 discrepancy Pauline has discovered in his register receipts from the previous day, allows Will to help him search the receipt rolls for the error. There's no obvious reason that such a dull project - it takes several minutes - should make dangerous, believable, feelingful theater but it does.

Jackson McHenry, Vulture: In scenes that take place outside of the building, Jennifer Schriever's lighting isolates characters in inky blackness in front of bright bands of neon. Will's extremism is maybe a reasonable outgrowth from circumstances such as these. Hunter wants you on the fence - with rapture on one side and boring old wage labor on the other.

Steven Suskin, New York Stage Review: Propelling the action is new hire Will (Peter Mark Kendall), an adult with not only a mysterious past but a mysterious present. And there, as they say, hangs the tale; if A Bright New Boise is not quite up to the excellence of Hunter's recent plays, it is perhaps because the plotting is both too visible and too much. That said, the quality of the writing, the vibrant coloring of the characters, and the stark originality of the playwright's chosen milieu are already apparent, elements which make Boise well worth a Signature visit.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Theatre Guide: In A Bright New Boise, playwright Samuel D. Hunter turns the cheerless break room of a big-box arts-and-crafts superstore into a setting to explore big ideas about faith and family. While those notions are individually intriguing, they don't cohere into a collective impact in this work first seen off-off Broadway in 2010.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Hunter leaves the audience appreciating the play's many parts but unsure of its whole. Whether or not Alex finally experiences the Rapture he seeks, patrons aren't provided enough of their cathartic rapture.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: There are moving moments in this revival, at Signature Theater through March 12th, and a fine cast doing their best to bring to life the sometimes quirky characters in a play that won for Hunter an Obie and his first major acclaim. But "A Bright New Boise" takes on a subject - religious extremism - for which the playwright's gentle, oblique approach now feels insufficient.

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