Review: Love, Loss, Loneliness, and Figuring Out How to Be a Person in THE FEW at CoHo Productions

In the middle of Samuel D. Hunter's THE FEW, Brian - a long-haul truck driver recently returned home after a four-year absence - slumps in a chair and says: "I'm really terrible at being a person." That statement perfectly encapsulates the struggle at the center of this play, which is about people trying to figure out how to be people and to perform the seemingly impossible task of connecting with themselves and with one another.

As the play opens, Brian (Michael O'Connell) enters the trailer-turned-office where he and QZ (Val Landrum) once published a newspaper for truckers with a mutual friend, Jim. Brian's been gone for four years, having disappeared the night Jim died, and leaving QZ -- who was not just his business partner but also his lover -- alone. Upon his return, he learns that things have changed. The paper, which once ran stories and editorials, is now mostly personal ads (it's also finally profitable), QZ is seeing someone named Rick, and she has an assistant -- Matthew (Caleb Sohigian), who was also Jim's nephew and sees Brian as something of a hero, having grown up reading his stories in the paper.

Brian also discovers that time doesn't heal all wounds. Most of this tight 90-minute play features the three characters all figuring out how to relate to one another in their new reality. Their efforts are punctuated by recordings of personal ads from other long-haul truckers who are also just looking for another person to connect with.

Some things I really liked about this play:

It's very non-self-aware about being a play. Under Brandon Woolley's direction, the characters don't really play to the audience -- they play to each other. There are times when they have their conversations facing the back wall of the set. I know this sounds weird, but it's very effective at invoking a feeling of realism. It feels less like you're watching a play and more like you're sitting at the other end of the trailer.

The cast is tops. This is the best performance I've ever seen from Michael O'Connell -- his Brian is alternately so frustrating and so heart-breaking and so frustrating and...well, you get it. Val Landrum is excellent as always, in particular in the emotion she infuses between the lines. Caleb Sohigian is also great as Matthew, who for reasons of his own is obsessed about things being just right.

THE FEW is not a big action play (though there is one pretty exciting scene involving a BB gun). It's a quiet and thoughtful play. And it's in the quiet moments where it gets closest to the essence of what it is to be human.

THE FEW runs through April 16. Get your tickets here: http://www.cohoproductions.org/

Photo credit: Owen Carey

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