The Few – Location, Tickets, Reviews
The Few is a quiet three-character play by Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale, A Bright New Boise) making its East Coast premier at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. The story of a newspaper written for long-haul truck drivers passing through a lonely Idaho stretch of I-80, whose founder returns after mysteriously disappearing for four years, The Few is a terse, elegant play about how the search for human connection can pull us from – and lead us to – aching despair.
Maxamoo
Sam Hunter writes plays about everyday human dilemmas. Within the tightly-constructed contours of his plays (most notably The Whale, which premiered at Playwrights Horizons last season), Hunter’s characters can appear unremarkable, but let them speak for a while and they reveal how profound the simplest yearnings and the smallest choices can be.
The Few continues this pattern. You may not think you want to see a play about an Idaho truckers newspaper but that’s not what The Few is really about. There are moments in this play when statements about loss, fear, and regret turn the tiny Rattlestick theater into a cage rattled by the lonely. You will leave the theater having felt that rattle and may, in some way, recognize it as your own. But The Few isn’t all introspection and melancholy. Hunter has a surprising knack for comedy. We haven’t seen a better use of a BB gun onstage, that’s for sure.
A fantastic trio of actors bring The Few to life. Michael Laurence and Tasha Lawrence, who play the newspaper’s founder and current publisher, respectively, both have faces you cannot help but focus on, for fear you’ll miss a subtle tic that will change a scene entirely. Gideon Glick is also excellent as an awkward boy who firmly believes in the paper’s mission. Glick’s performance is simultaneously broad and meticulously rendered.
As the long 2013-2014 theater season winds down, it is refreshing to see something as unpretentious and honest as The Few rounding out the Spring. They rarely make ’em like this anymore.
For more on playwright Samuel D. Hunter, you can listen to our interview with him here.
Critics’ Review
New York Times
In ‘The Few,’ a Man’s Return Stirs Emotions
New York Post
‘The Few’ keeps its characters living in the past
Time Out New York
One of our finest young playwrights continues his forward drive.
Variety
The latest play by award-winning scribe Samuel D. Hunter is smart and sensitive, if not fully realized
New York Daily News
Actors push too hard in this wobbly and uneven drama about a penny saver for truckers
Theatre Is Easy
A captivating portrait of the lonely life of people who write about the loneliness of truckers who sometimes swerve off the road.
NYtheater Now
The play is certainly in good hands, and worth grappling with. Walking into the theater, one cannot really expect less – Dane Laffrey’s wonderfully messy, cluttered, obviously 1990′s set (giant old computer monitors glow with screen-savers of nostalgia) point to something I expect, love, and admire about the work produced at Rattlestick: it’s scrappy, messy, at work with itself.
TheaterMania
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater gives a solid production to Samuel D. Hunter’s angst-ridden play about a literary newspaper for truckers.
Theater Pizzazz
The Few will keep you enthralled, make you laugh hysterically, make you cry, make you rage, and leave you changed, so grateful to have seen it.
TICKETS
$55 (click here for tickets)
DATES
Performances through June 21, 2014
LOCATION
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
226 Waverly Place
New York City
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RUNNING TIME
1 hour 35 minutes, no intermission
CAST & CREW
(partial list)
Written by Samuel D. Hunter
Directed by Davis McCallum
Featuring Michael Laurence, Tasha Lawrence & Gideon Glick