Review: ‘Grangeville’ at Ruskin Group Theatre powerfully excavates the past
- Mayank Keshaviah
- Jul 27
- 4 min read
When Luke Skywalker crash-lands his X-wing on the planet Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back, the swamp he finds himself stuck in is dark, murky and constantly simmers with a tension that hints at dangers lurking beneath the surface. Viewed through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey (as the Star Wars films have been), Luke’s arrival on Dagobah is a retreat to a primal space where he must conquer his own darkness, gaining redemptive knowledge in the process, before returning to the social world.
While Dagobah is in a galaxy far, far removed from Idaho, the two estranged stepbrothers in the West Coast premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville” face a similar emotional journey when an unexpected reconnection, due to mounting medical bills from their dying mother, forces them to delve into the swamp of their familial trauma and painful past.
Arnold (Tim Cummings) is an artist who’s been living in the Netherlands with his husband for years, having escaped from the trailer parks of his Grangeville childhood as fast as possible. His situation parallels the playwright’s own life in that Hunter left Idaho and now lives with his husband in the much more cosmopolitan New York City.
Arnold (also like Hunter) initially became known for creating works about his hometown, but now that he has moved on artistically, he’s found less commercial success. He and husband Bram have also moved from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, which he describes disparagingly as “some town that got leveled in World War II and replaced with fuckin’ shipping containers and brutalist McDonald’s.”
Jerry (Jeff LeBeau), on the other hand, is the one who stayed. As the older stepbrother, and the more rough-hewn of the two, he had largely been content with a life of quiet desperation in small-town Idaho. But the demands of caring for a mother who suffered two strokes, with medical bills piling up on top of a marriage falling apart, led him to contemplate ending his life. When his teenage son found his suicide note, though, guilt and recriminations compelled him to seek therapy, and he’s doing better. Maybe.
Because their mother, who had a penchant for attracting the wrong kind of men, made Arnold the executor of her will (much to his surprise), he is forced to interact with Jerry. As their long-distance talks veer from medical logistics into the landscape of their past, he even tells Jerry, “It’s like no matter what memory it is, no matter how seemingly innocuous it is, it always leads straight to shit.” Jerry, on the other hand, values the fact that fate has brought them back together, giving him the opportunity to try to make amends for his past treatment of Arnold.
To his credit, director John Perrin Flynn makes phone and video calls a lot more interesting on stage than they are in real life. And since a majority of the interaction between the two men living in disparate locales is not IRL, the blocking and staging needed to animate their conversations becomes even more important.
Stephanie Kerley’s Schwartz’s “torn cardboard box” backdrop, punctuated only by a trailer-home door, feels both bleakly minimalist (in accordance with Hunter’s “void and liminal space” setting for the play) and evocative of the fractured relationships/psyches/memories of the characters. Dan Weingarten’s lighting is crucial in defining locations within that void, as it also starkly illuminates the stepbrothers’ separation. Keith Stevenson’s sound design is more subtly atmospheric, though it does come to the fore when Jerry meets his wife outside a gas station next to a highway.
LeBeau brings an easygoing warmth and relatability to Jerry, while simultaneously hinting at the shame and regret lurking just beneath the surface of his folksy, self-deprecating humor. And Cummings, to create Arnold’s uptight, aloof intellectualism and dismissiveness (stemming from his traumatic childhood), skillfully adopts a rigid posture, handwringing and other mannerisms that make his character seem constantly uncomfortable in his own skin.
Cummings also plays Jerry’s wife, Stacey, while LeBeau plays Arnold’s Dutch husband Bram. Hunter doesn’t even alter the character names in the script for those roles, perhaps aligning with the classical theatrical unities of Aristotle’s “Poetics.” And while Cummings and LeBeau clearly differentiate those characters with subtle vocal and physical shifts, a part of me felt there was a missed opportunity to see Jerry and Arnold interact with other humans, to reveal some of the “multitudes” they contain (à la Walt Whitman) more overtly.
Toward the end, when Jerry calls a drunk Arnold, who is spiraling in the wake of his own marital discord, the characters exit the liminal space and break into the subliminal, accompanied by a surprising set-change that brings their childhoods to the fore in a visceral way. In that new space, going down the rabbit hole of memory unleashes powerful emotions that bring things to a head between the men.
However, like young Skywalker, it isn’t until Arnold stops resisting and starts accepting the dark parts of his lineage and past — both of which he has spent his life denying and compartmentalizing — that his healing feels like it truly begins.
That emotionally treacherous journey is powerful to witness in this deeply psychological drama, showcasing the talents of both actors and well suited to the newly revamped (but still intimate) Kaplan Stage at Ruskin Group Theatre.
“Grangeville” is extended through Aug. 16 at the Ruskin Group Theatre, 2800 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, with shows Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. (check website for exceptions). For tickets and other information, visit RuskinGroupTheatre.com or call the box office at 310-397-3244. Run time is 90 minutes with no intermission.
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