Little Bear Ridge Road – 19 October 2025

Little Bear Ridge Road is that rare piece of writing that can openly discuss some of the least hopeful events a person can go through in a way that creates laughter and smiles, taking away some of the pain from the inevitable moments in which the audience sees themselves and their loved ones within Samuel D. Hunter’s text. The story centers on two characters: Ethan (Micah Stock) and Sarah (Laurie Metcalf). After the death of Ethan’s father, Ethan returns to Idaho to settle his father’s estate and winds up staying with his aunt, Sarah for several years as the COVID pandemic rages on. Ethan is rudderless and holding on to self deprecating feelings that prevent him from letting others into his life and figuring out his next steps. Sarah is dying of cancer and also wants to keep others out, mostly because she is a former nurse who knows that her next steps involve losing her agency and dignity. Both are in the same place, making a lot of noise, but ultimately going nowhere.

Enter the agent of change, love interest and all around good guy James (John Drea), who temporarily helps heal the relationship between Ethan and Sarah and is ultimately responsible for the somewhat chaotic and explosive end of their co-dependence. Despite Ethan’s standoffish, awkward, insensitive behavior, James falls in love with him. When James inadvertently reveals that Ethan is using Sarah’s illness as an excuse to hide from the world and remain a writer who “isn’t writing now”, Sarah kicks Ethan out so that he can move on with living his life and she can move into the next phase of her life ending. It all sounds tragic and dark, but Samuel D. Hunter’s script, Joe Mantello’s direction, and Laurie Metcalf’s delivery, are a triple threat that makes this show quirky, relatable, and enjoyable to watch. Little Bear Ridge Road holds space for lovable curmudgeons and how being stuck is infinitely more bearable when you have someone to be stuck with.

Thematically, the show is intriguing because most of the show is spent on a couch in a void going nowhere, and yet the ultimate message is about the importance of productivity and moving on by facing what you’re avoiding. Ethan writes his novel—but he writes it about the television show that he watched while he was unable to get off the couch. This suggests that the time he spent in the void was not wasted—it was a vital part of his process. Sarah does the best she can with the available medical care, and chooses to have companionship instead of isolation in her final moments—this is enabled by what she learned from coming to love Ethan. Then there’s James’s interest in the cosmos, which contributes some big picture ideas about the vastness of existence and a world that keeps turning no matter how close or far celestial bodies are from one another. James isn’t necessarily stuck, but it’s interesting that someone so whole and stable chooses to be around people who aren’t. In the literary sense, James is a catalyst for change, but the way Drea portrayed him evoked the idea of how good people can get weighed down trying to fix broken ones. This too is unsustainable and can result in inertia.

Ultimately, despite the heaviness of its themes, Little Bear Ridge Road is a show that flies by without dragging. It is engaging, entertaining, and moving, with a lot to think about. I left feeling a sense of gratitude and also a sense of resolve regarding the importance of getting off of my own hypothetical couch and becoming what Sarah would call, “the kind of person who owns a telescope.”

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.