

"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. Eddie hasn't told his employees, however, because he is convinced that he can save the place - somehow or other. 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. "We're not really a family that talks," he later remarks, in what is surely the understatement of the year. We're finally in the same room together," says Eddie, but he's playing to a tough audience. Doris, Eddie and Nick's mother, positively drips with disapproval over everything, starting with the absence of gluten-free pasta. 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. 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.ĭownstage left, Eddie is trying to keep his family together long enough for a single meal. And Cole is openly hostile to any kind of birthday felicitation. 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.


It is a less-than-happy occasion: Tammy, Troy's wife, is desperately sneaking a drink. Upstage right is a birthday celebration for Cole, father of Troy, one of the waiters. 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. 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.
#The few samuel d hunter how to#
"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. Knight, Brian Hutchsion Photo: Jeremy Daniel “Eschewing irony and judgment…Hunter’s quietly captivating dramas confront the polarizing and socially isolating aspects of contemporary life across the American landscape… leavens his plays with humor and compassion for the lives he depicts…with literary allusions and larger themes of faith and doubt.Theatre in Review: Pocatello (Playwrights Horizons) It since premiered in 2013 at The Old Globe in San Diego, followed by a NYC production in 2014 at Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre. Hunter about the struggle to keep hope alive, the search for human connection, and the barriers and detours on the way there.ĬoHo Productions with Val Landrum and Brandon Woolley bring Hunter’s work back to Portland with The Few, which was workshopped in Portland Center Stage’s 2012 JAW festival. A compact, compassionate play from NW-native and MacArthur genius playwright Samuel D.
#The few samuel d hunter full#
When Bryan, the paper’s founding publisher and QZ’s ex-lover, returns after an unexplained four-year absence, he finds the paper full of personal ads from lonely truckers, his former partner full of rage and regret, and his double-wide trailer/office occupied by Matthew, a sensitive young misfit full of misplaced hero-worship. It’s 1999 and Y2K panic looms over a small town in northern Idaho where QZ struggles to keep a grassroots newspaper for long-haul truckers alive. Performances by Val Landrum, Micheal O’Connell and Caleb Sohigian Photo Credit Gary Norman CoHo Productions with Brandon Woolley and Val Landrum present The Few Written by Samuel D.
