On the remote outskirts of a small Idaho town, a razor-tongued aunt and her long-estranged nephew find themselves suddenly back in each other’s orbit—two lonely souls with a crumbling house to sell and a tangled history to unravel. Bitingly funny and quietly explosive, Little Bear Ridge Road is a sharply etched portrait of two people reaching across emotional galaxies—searching for meaning and fumbling toward connection, even as they fear it might swallow them whole. In this piercing and profound new play, the void is vast, the stars are indifferent, and love—messy, human, and hard-won—might be the only thing tethering us to Earth.
Had I not seen Grangeville at the Signature Center earlier this year, I might have qualms with Hunter retreading familiar territory. (Road premiered in Chicago in 2024.) Gifted though he might be, there’s only so much to be mined from a hypothetical scenario where one stays behind instead of going onto fantastic success as a celebrated playwright. But Grangeville denoted a new turn inward, critiquing the very penchant for self-pitying art that got him where he is. And Little Bear Ridge Road, despite Hunter’s status as a premiere writer for over a decade, is somehow his first on Broadway. There’s hardly a better one to leave his mark on the neighborhood and, at least with this production, save it from becoming the existential cul-de-sac it threatens to become.
Hunter, a prolific Off Broadway playwright with an oeuvre of works set in Idaho (“A Case for the Existence of God,” “Grangeville”), is making his Broadway debut with “Little Bear Ridge Road,” which had its premiere last year at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago. Its transfer declares the Broadway resurrection of the exiled-for-a-while producer Scott Rudin. (Allegations of bullying in 2021 led to widespread denunciations.) And honestly? Everything about this impeccable production, presented by Rudin and the media mogul Barry Diller, exudes the nearly flawless taste that Rudin is famous for.
| 2025 | Broadway |
Broadway |
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