History runs deeply through Greater Clements—deeper even than the defunct mine that lurks beneath a dying town in rural Idaho, where Samuel D. Hunter’s powerful and sorrowful new drama occurs.
There is the history of the mine where men perished in accidents large and small. There is the history of the region where thousands of Japanese-American people were interned in camps during World War II. There is the recent history of Clements, which has just voted to legally dissolve as a town in a feud with wealthy summer sojourners who demanded ordinances that the locals would not abide.
The history even closer to the heart of Greater Clements is the personal one lived by Maggie, the play’s plucky but luckless central character. Maggie, whose family goes back generations in Clements, has operated a modest storefront museum regarding the mine, which she is now closing down. Long ago deserted by her husband, Maggie is 65 years old and lives above the museum with her 20s-something son, Joe, who is plagued by recurring mental illness.
[Read Jesse Oxfeld’s ★★★★ review here.]
Maggie’s bleak future unexpectedly brightens with the reappearance of Billy Yamamoto, her former high school sweetheart, with whom she has long been out of touch. Billy, a nice, retired widower in charge of his teenaged granddaughter—their family troubles are revealed as well—obviously harbors feelings towards Maggie, who warmly responds in kind.
Billy eventually suggests that they live together in his home elsewhere in the state.
This possibility of a happy ending late in their life for Maggie and Billy, whose youthful romance was thwarted by her racist father, becomes shadowed by the hapless Joe’s mental issues.
Let’s detail no more about the story, except to note that the playwright gradually paints in all of this social and regional background through relatively natural conversation. The tender relationship that begins to glow between Maggie and Billy is lovely to observe in its easy warmth and yet it also seems poignant in the realization of all the wasted years they could not share together.
This fusion of different kinds of history and how it affects people’s lives that Hunter develops so skillfully makes much of Greater Clements register as a rich, perceptive, and touching drama. The play’s third act, which abruptly turns tragic, unfortunately does not resonate as persuasively as it might. It is a serious flaw in a potentially significant American drama that bespeaks our dolorous times. Let’s hope that someday Hunter will smooth out the choppy resolution of his play, which ends on a disconsolate note.
Premiering on Monday at the Mitzi E. Newhouse space, the play benefits from the resources that Lincoln Center Theater can provide for its production as well as by the excellent acting from a seven-member company that is generated under the finely-tuned direction of Davis McCallum.
Not only does the play require two different interiors and several outdoor locations, it features scenes set deep within the mine itself. Dane Laffrey, the designer, meets these scenic demands tidily with a single austere setting that utilizes an elevating deck, although some viewers may experience sightline issues due to the metal columns needed to realize it. One wishes that Laffrey were also able to convey the beauty of the Idaho countryside that surrounds this mostly woeful story.
Yi Zhao’s natural lighting, Kaye Voyce’s well-worn everyday clothes, and Fitz Patton’s sound design, which among its audible effects also suggests Joe’s inner anguish, contribute to the potency of the production. McCallum’s taut staging moves the nearly three hours-long play at a steady pace.
A pair of outstanding performances help to drive the drama. An actor who always brings a vital sense of actuality to the characters she plays, Judith Ivey vividly invests Maggie with a warm salt-of-the-earth forthrightness. The role of Joe is a tricky one, since physically expressing mental illness can easily be overdone, but Edmund Donovan depicts him as a sweet, anxious misfit who nervously plucks at his clothes and speaks in a sometimes strangulated voice; a sad young man who obviously is scared of himself.
The loving though often edgy mother-and-son bonds manifested by Ivey and Donovan seems authentic.
The awakening autumnal romance that Ivey shares so believably with Ken Narasaki’s cheerful and earnest Billy infuses a genuine radiance into what otherwise is a melancholy story about a community and its characters who are deeply haunted by their complicated past.
Greater Clements opened December 9, 2019, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and runs through January 19, 2020. Tickets and information: lct.org
