Review: A BRIGHT NEW BOISE Offers a Dark and Beautiful Search for Meaning

Desperation is a potent emotional state--one that can manifest in a variety of forms; yet, the hopelessness and confusion that occurs when contemplating the meaning of our existence is universal. Self-awareness is the simultaneous privilege and curse of human culture. We exhibit an essential craving for purpose, and relish any alleviation of our existential anguish. Desperation is powerful, and can't necessarily be "solved" or wrapped into a tidy, conclusionary bow at the end of a play--which is why it's such a compelling and confounding subject for a theatrical representation of the human experience.

Elements Theatre Collective's production of A Bright New Boise presents a variety of expressions of desperation, from quiet prayers for deliverance to outlandish and provocative shows of dissatisfaction. Samuel D. Hunter's play about Will, a man attempting to develop a relationship with a son he gave up for adoption seventeen years earlier, starts off comically enough: Will is a seemingly unassuming man in his thirties who gets a job at a Hobby Lobby craft supply store and joins the flock of misfit employees. His past is mysterious until he abruptly announces that fellow cashier, brooding teenager Alex, is his estranged son. However, Hunter's play is less about familial rehabilitation than it is about a collection of characters demanding meaning from a universe that won't answer. Elements has produced a masterful work that straddles the line between the unchartable abyss of life's purposelessness and the joyful relief of stumbling upon moments of surprising humor within that indeliberate-yet-undeniable nihilism. Five great actors, one inescapable break room set: A Bright New Boise is a heartbreaking rendition of the greatest futility mankind can ever recognize within themselves--the comprehension of their own insignificance.

Will (played with a subtle intensity by Rob Grayson) is a deeply religious man whose conviction in his cultish branch of Christianity is waning after his indirect involvement in the tragic death of a young boy he tried to counsel through a loss in faith. Will seeks out his son, Alex, ostensibly to reconnect with family--though it's distressingly clear that his efforts to build a relationship are less about Alex and more about easing a tortured conscious. Will attempts to right the mistakes of a past from which he cannot escape by replacing one teenage boy with another. Will remains encouraged by the prospect of an imminent rapture, one in which he imagines that the houses and parking lots and strip malls will be swallowed in a divine fire and transformed into an existence of brilliant light through the power of Christ. Yet this hope for deliverance is less of a religious belief than it is a desperate plea for escape from an unbearable existence. "There has to be something else," he tells Alex when confronted about his philosophies. "Otherwise I'm just a bad father working at a Hobby Lobby, living in his car." Even through the tenuous connections he manages with panic-attack prone Alex (Aaron Linker), Will cannot escape from the experience of being Will. Hunter has imprisoned his characters in bland, powerless lives--formidable commentary on the perceived futility of existence.

Jenna Scanlon plays Pauline, the no-nonsense Hobby Lobby manager who's made it her mission to carry the retail branch to greatness. She demands order, and thrives on constant conflict with her uncooperative employees, including Mandy, an infected splinter in Pauline's routine of efficiency who's never seen on stage. Mandy, like our concept of reality, exists not because she is tangible, but because we are aware of her. Like life (or a bad employee), Mandy is unreliable and uncontrollable. Other characters include Anna (Katelyn Tustin), trapped in unabated adolescence, who experiences life's joys and tragedies vicariously through trashy novels; and Leroy (Blake Benlan), Alex's adopted brother who's impotent attempts to garner negative attention via half-assed shock value and pronouncements of self-importance make him funny and appropriately pathetic--but his unwavering devotion to protecting Alex makes him likeable and well-rounded. Tustin plays Anna with a well-executed sense of eager laissez-faire--she has few options, and alludes to dissatisfaction, but finds enough escape through fiction to consider herself satisfied. Leroy is a constant source of comic relief, and a welcome respite from the stifling intimacy of life in the Hobby Lobby break room. Leroy has his own apartment and is pursuing an MFA at a local university, which gives his character a sense of ambition and upward mobility.

Which brings us to Alex, whose awkward moodiness might be attributed to the emotions associated with meeting his birth father, some level of depression or mental illness, or even simple teen angst. Alex, like his father, is desperately searching for meaning: he tries to come off as tough, but he's impressionable, and urgently seeking anything that might lend some semblance of explanation to his painful existence. His moments of discomfiture are charming and their content is funny, but there's a disturbing fatalism below the surface. For example, his ridiculously over-the-top punk-style spoken word poetry slam against "the man" ("CAPITALISM! END.") implies a constant struggle with simmering sadness and misunderstood rage. It is Alex, more than anyone, who reminds us what we've forgotten in the course of watching these characters flounder for meaning: ultimately, whether you're waiting for the rapture, waiting for the dramatic conclusion to someone else's story, or simply waiting to be noticed, we're all waiting for the same, inevitable end.

Dark themes mercilessly played through sympathetic characters make for an unapologetic and ambitious play that forces the audience to consider personal and universal meaning. Elements has, once again, chosen an intelligent and moving piece of theatre that puts a mirror to the dark recesses of the human spirit. A Bright New Boise is a bold experience in theatrical realism--an expertly executed and purposeful production.

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