Theatre in Review: Pocatello (Playwrights Horizons)

	T. R. Knight, Brian Hutchsion Photo: Jeremy Daniel

"It's sort of hard to know how to live nowadays, isn't it?" So says Eddie, the manager of the generic Olive Garden-style restaurant that is the setting for Pocatello, and he ought to know. Indeed, with its arbor of fake grapes, stucco walls, and pseudo-Italianate atmosphere, it's a kind of family-friendly version of the Last Chance Saloon. Eddie has declared "Famiglia Week," encouraging his staff to bring in their own families for a meal, but the clans we see are held together with spit and Scotch tape. Upstage right is a birthday celebration for Cole, father of Troy, one of the waiters. It is a less-than-happy occasion: Tammy, Troy's wife, is desperately sneaking a drink. Becky, Troy and Tammy's daughter, is so obsessed with food additives and the exploitation of farmworkers associated with the bill of fare that she cannot hold down her meal. And Cole is openly hostile to any kind of birthday felicitation. Presented with a cake and candle, he shouts, "I fought in Korea! Stop singing!" This comment is not the amusing non sequitur it first appears to be, for Cole is slipping into dementia.

Downstage left, Eddie is trying to keep his family together long enough for a single meal. His brother, Nick, and Nick's wife, Kelly, are in town from Saint Paul, but Nick makes it painfully clear they are just passing through on the way to Sun Valley. Doris, Eddie and Nick's mother, positively drips with disapproval over everything, starting with the absence of gluten-free pasta. "It's been way too long. We're finally in the same room together," says Eddie, but he's playing to a tough audience. "We're not really a family that talks," he later remarks, in what is surely the understatement of the year.

Then there's the little ticking bomb that Eddie alone knows about: The restaurant is set to be closed at the end of the following week. Eddie hasn't told his employees, however, because he is convinced that he can save the place -- somehow or other. "The last few nights, we've done a lot better," he says, refusing to admit that the restaurant's corporate owner has written it off as a bad debt.

In plays like A Bright New Boise, The Whale, and The Few, Samuel D. Hunter has emerged as the poet of America's fraying social fabric, and Pocatello is quite possibly his most acute variation on this theme. (It is certainly the funniest.) The town of the title was once a prosperous middle-class haven, but the paper mill closed, good jobs vanished, and anyone with any drive long ago left in search of a better life. What remains is a miracle mile populated by Applebee's, Best Buy, Denny's, and K-Mart -- and the substandard jobs they provide. Depression, substance abuse, and suicide are regular facts of life. And for someone like Eddie, who is quietly gay, the options for a meaningful connection are minimal. "I used to know exactly who I was here," he muses, adding that when he drives around Pocatello these days, "I get lost. So easily. Like I've never been here before."

Armed with his own special brand of empathy, Hunter charts the meltdowns of both families in sharply amusing fashion, while never losing sight of the fact that both of them are populated with lost souls. Watching Eddie struggle with static-infested loudspeakers and picture frames that refuse to stay in place tells you all you need to know about his Sisyphean existence. Nick, himself a successful businessman, urges Eddie to get out and find a new life. "I mean, you have options. You went to college," he says. "I majored in Pacific Northwest history," replies Eddie, flatly, effectively dismissing that idea. Becky, who gets suspended from school, goes to work at the restaurant, where she spreads clouds of ill will. Her big offense was to show photos of the Rape of Nanking to her fellow students. "I go to a school where I get suspended for showing people true things from history in a history class," she says, driving home each word as if hammering a nail. Surveying her surroundings, she adds, "Only idiots would think this is like real Italy and forget they're in the Best Western parking lot." Isabelle, one of the wait staff, is stunned by Eddie's efforts to save the restaurant, saying "The only reason to work at places like this is you don't need to care. You just go to work, try to have fun, and go to the lake on weekends."

Even as the restaurant quietly slides into chaos, Hunter carefully reveals the spiritual and psychological wounds that have set his characters adrift. Troy and Tammy's marriage is a perpetual cycle of disappointment, blame, separation, and reunion. In one especially powerful passage, Tammy shamefully admits that she'd be just as happy if her husband and daughter disappeared forever. And we also learn about the suicide that blew Eddie's family apart, once and for all, despite his hapless attempts at bringing them together,

There's a lot going on in Pocatello at any given moment -- often with tragedy and comedy bumping into each other -- and all of it is expertly orchestrated by the director, Davis McCallum. Among other things, he has assembled a first-rate cast, beginning with T. R. Knight as Eddie, his cheerful, can-do manner barely masking his terrible sadness. Making an equally strong impression is Leah Karpel, whose Becky is one of the most fiercely disillusioned adolescents to take the stage in some time. ("I guess I just haven't figured out how to be a happy person without being stupid or naïve," she says, accurately describing her dilemma.) Cameron Scoggins is effective as the restaurant's house meth addict, who can't stop pretending that he is only a casual user. Brian Hutchison is a most persuasive bundle of nerves as Nick, who can't bear to revisit the scene of the family's tragedy. Jonathan Hogan is touching as Cole, who escapes from the county care facility, then can't remember how he did it. Jessica Dickey's Tammy has a telling moment when she is caught, red-handed, pouring wine into a Diet Pepsi. And Brenda Wehle brings a superb range of feelings to her climactic midnight meal (with gluten-free pasta, of course) with Eddie, the two of them finally finding a way to reach across the divide that has separated them for years.

Adding much to the production's overall effects is Lauren Helpern's eerily accurate set design, which is lit with care by Eric Southern, especially in the late-night scenes, when he adds depth and shadings that add to the sense of desolation. Jessica Pabst's costumes demonstrate her unusually sharp eye for the characters' contemporary casual wear. Matt Tierney's sound design effectively blends various pop selections -- both American and Italian -- piped into the restaurant's sound system, along with the sounds of passing cars and a full restaurant.

Watching Pocatello, I was oddly reminded of the playwright A. R. Gurney. Not that Hunter is any kind of Gurney imitator; their characters and worlds couldn't be more different. But like Gurney, Hunter is remarkably inventive at finding new and compelling ways of exploring his spiritual drifters and their sterile Idaho world. Not many young playwrights have such sureness of vision; Hunter's plays often feel more mature than those of writers twice his age.--David Barbour