Review - Pocatello

I've been hearing about Sam Hunter and his work for quite some time now, but for one reason or another, I haven't seen any of his plays before.  After hearing (mainly) really good things about his new piece at Playwrights Horizons, I decided to give him a try.  Good thing I didn't wait any longer, since I saw the next-to-last performance via a nicely discounted TD ticket...

Pocatello stars T.R. Knight (of Grey's Anatomy  tv fame) as the manager of a chain restaurant in a small Idaho town who is facing adversity in his personal and professional life.  The play features characters who are so well-fleshed out and so well-acted that I was completely captivated by them.  T.R. Knight's character, Eddie, has decided to begin 'family week' at the restaurant, both to try to repair his fractured family, and also to improve the fortunes of the failing restaurant.  Eddie is a well-meaning, kind young man who desperately wants to connect with someone: his co-workers, his family, someone.  He's been estranged from his brother and his mother ever since his father's suicide; plus, Eddie is gay, which is profoundly alienating in this tiny town, so he is so isolated, he's practically inert.  Not that his being gay is a secret, it's out in the open, but he makes it clear it's hard to meet anyone in this town so that adds to his isolation.  But he is so resolute that his hometown is precisely where he belongs.

Photo credit: Sara Krulwich

Everything is coming to a head now because the corporate office wants to close the failing restaurant, but Eddie is consumed with 'saving' it, as he was unable to save his father or has been unable to save his family, or the dying town for that matter.  My heart was breaking for him throughout.  I was sobbing audibly during the last scene at his desperate attempt to connect with his mother (who said to him earlier in the play, "I wish you wouldn't call me Mom.")

I knew these people so well; I come from a small town like this, where all individuality is being scrunched out and only generic/theme/chain mentality is what succeeds.  Every time I go home I wonder how things can go on with every inch of land covered with more and more commerce and less and less nature.  I related to the characters who were desperate to get out of the town, but I also related to the characters who were desperate to make their lives work in the place they considered home.  I related to the guilt of not being able to connect to anyone, but I also related to the guilt over not WANTING to connect.  Plays with horrible families make me so sad - I immediately feel such sympathy and heartache for characters who don't experience the complete love and acceptance from their family as I have.  Not that my life has been picture perfect, far from it, but I've been able to withstand the slings and arrows of life's hardships because I've always had the foundation of the love of my family and friends holding me up, so when I see a play that features characters who are quite like me, yet they don't have that support system to fall back on, I'm immediately connected and saddened at the same time.

Plot-wise, I did feel a lull in the proceedings and some of the points were made over and over again; maybe the play could've lost ten or fifteen minutes.  But paradoxically I was on the edge of my seat with what these characters were saying and feeling, so, for me, this was a wonderfully fulfilling theatrical experience, even if I'm not sure if it was a completely successful play.  I'm ever so glad I saw it and I eagerly look forward to what Samuel Hunter brings us next. It's not often you see stories of people I truly know - middle-class, midwestern people who are quirky and interesting, not yahoos or creatures of ridicule.  Every character in Pocatello was human and flawed, but also created with dignity and respect.  I really connected.  I'm sorry I waited so long to see this production, I might've gone back to check out the play's structure again after the raw experience of the characters' sadness.  I won't make the same mistake with any future Hunter plays I check out...