Grangeville – 28 February 2025

Grangeville features two brothers, Jerry (Paul Sparks) and Arnold (Brian J. Smith) reconnecting after years of silence because their mother is dying and her medical bills and will warrant a discussion. The brothers are estranged because Jerry spent his whole life in their small town in Idaho, while Arnold fled the scene to live in Holland. Both are secretly struggling with separation from their spouses – they have more in common than they are willing to let each other know.

The most standout feature of this production by far was the lighting design (Stacey Derosier). Lighting symbolically took the audience through moments of connection. The beginning of the show was in total darkness, with light slowly added as the brothers became more comfortable speaking to each other again. The stark lighting changes, accompanied by sound (Christopher Darbassie), let us see the passage of time, with the general level of light brightening. For much of the show, faces were not properly lit so that the audience felt as in the dark about how each brother was feeling as the brothers themselves. This was a bold, yet effective choice, as audiences generally rely on facial expressions to understand the contrast between what a character says and what they mean.

Another bold choice, this one, presumably on the part of the playwright (Samuel D. Hunter), was having the brothers play each other‘s spouses instead of casting additional performers in those roles. It felt uncertain if this was an attempt to posit that the brothers married people who were similar to their brother, but if that was intended, it didn’t land. Unique performers would have been more effective, though it did humanize both characters in that seeing how dynamic the actors could be bled into audience opinions of their primary characters, largely because their costumes (Ricky Reynoso) and the set (dots) did not change.

The play culminated in the brothers seeing each other face-to-face in their mom’s old trailer after her passing. The one scenic change in the show was the very solid-looking walls ascending up into the fly space to show a tiny, cramped world in the trailer behind it. Both characters are more trapped in the light than the dark, and at times they felt farther away from each other in a confined space than they did oceans apart. Back in the “home” where Jerry abused Arnold, things were uncomfortably close. No one wanted to be there, but no one had anywhere else to be, just as in childhood.

Grangeville was unique in that the design elements did the heavy lifting of telling the story. The actual dialogue was pretty surface level. It evoked the idea of being trapped in mediocrity, a characteristic comment to both brothers. Grangeville was a sad elegy depicting how people get stuck in their town of origin when they weren’t provided with the love, guidance, and support in their childhoods to rise above and maintain a different, preferred lifestyle elsewhere. The play is built on depression, anger, resentment, bitterness, desperation, and pain. It’s a devastating snapshot that emphasizes a cautionary tale – some decisions can’t be undone, so if you have a choice to do better, do better now before it is too late.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Blake Zidell & Associates.