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."
As Ryan, Mr. Weiler gives a similarly nuanced performance. The jittery young man remains traumatized from his time in prison, and is prone to panic attacks. But Mr. Weiler also underscores how deeply grateful Ryan is to Peg underneath his truculent exterior, and how the sudden death of Jim has left a hole in his heart, too. In the role of Dani, Ms. Thompson, looking like a slightly awkward, overgrown girl, brings some leavening humor to the play when she proves to be an unusually sensitive “good cop,” despite being new to the force. And while she has the least complex role, Ms. Fitzgerald fills out the sometimes harsh contours of Sheriff Kris forcefully.
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.
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