When we hear the term swing state, you probably think of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia—any of those part-red, part-blue states that keep us glued to cable news on election night, waiting impatiently for Steve Kornacki and his khakis to call the races one way or another.
Yet Rebecca Gilman’s quietly powerful new drama, Swing State, a Goodman Theatre production that just opened off-Broadway, is not what you’d call a political play. The only real partisan remark comes from 65-year-old Peg (an outstanding Mary Beth Fisher), in reference to the town newspaper: “I canceled my subscription when they endorsed Trump.” True, the play is set in rural Wisconsin—the sort of place where everyone leaves their screen doors unlocked because acres and acres of land separates them from their nearest neighbors. “It’s a prairie. Like in Little House on the Prairie,” deputy sheriff Dani (Anne E. Thompson) says of Peg’s expansive homestead. “I remember that show,” replies sheriff Kris (Kirsten Fitzgerald), aka Dani’s aunt. “Michael Landon was always walking around in suspenders and no shirt. I loved that show.”
But Swing State really denotes something emotional—a limbo-like place where Peg has been trapped for the past year. It’s summer 2021, and early in the pandemic Peg lost her husband, Jim; it wasn’t Covid, but rather a sudden and unexpected heart attack. Still, death is death, there are no points for degrees of difficulty, and she’s still struggling. Now, she’s begun cataloguing everything else that’s disappearing around her—the flora and fauna that she and Jim spent so much time watching and protecting: bats, which are falling prey to a European fungus called “white-nose syndrome”; the chorus frogs that used to spend the springs in the “ephemeral pond at the bottom of the driveway”; the Whip-poor-wills (“There was one that would sing every night up on the bluff”); nighthawks (“I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve seen one”). She’d happily sacrifice herself if it meant the proliferation of the beloved bound-for-extinction plants and animals that populate her prairie.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
“Fuckin’ ray of sunshine. That’s what you are,” says Ryan (Bubba Weiler) over a late-night bowl of homemade vegetable soup. At first glance, you think he’s her son; that’s how she treats him. She’s known him since he was 6 years old, and has guided him through the roughest patches, including a recent stint in prison; now, at 26, he still needs her guidance.
Peg is also, as they say, getting her affairs in order— i.e., writing up a will—“to be on the safe side,” she explains to Ryan. One suspects Jim had no such papers, and that she was completely unprepared for his death (this is extremely common). “It’s what people do and it’s okay.” Ryan thinks the legal document is some kind of death sentence: “Don’t come near me with that thing.”
Yet Peg isn’t the only one in emotional purgatory here. Ryan is a recovering alcoholic who spent three years in prison for his part in a drunken bar brawl. And he’s grieving the loss of Jim as well: “I admired the fuck outta that guy.… He took time with you. He wanted you to learn things,” he tells Dani of the surrogate father he misses dearly. Dani married right out of high school and divorced quickly, and is still trying to rebuild her self-esteem. “Look at me! You. Are. In. Uniform. You. Are. A. Public. Servant. Chin up, shoulders back. Have some fucking pride,” says Kris in a well-meaning if aggressive attempt to help. And Kris lost her son, Jason, to an opioid overdose.
Gilman (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Glory of Living, Spinning Into Butter) has done something almost impossible—and extremely impressive: She’s written about the pandemic without writing about the pandemic. There are a few lines about covid, a mention of vaccines, and a couple brief mask appearances, but otherwise, that’s it. Swing State is about the aftermath—the people left behind and the obstacles they encounter. Ryan makes ends meet by driving a truck, an essential job in 2021. Opioid use (and related deaths) skyrocketed during the pandemic. So did divorce rates. Not to mention Peg’s struggle to simply survive day by day. These are real people and real issues. If The New York Times encountered them in a diner, they’d probably write a story about why they voted for Trump (but not Peg, of course).
As this is an Audible production, it will be recorded for future listening. But it would be a shame to miss seeing the cozy detailed set by Tony winner Todd Rosenthal (August: Osage County). The bookshelves in the sitting room are packed with well-worn tomes, and topped with Longaberger-style baskets; the kitchen, meanwhile, includes a fully stocked pantry and Pyrex bowls lifted straight out of my grandma’s kitchen cabinets. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
Swing State opened Sept. 17, 2023, at the Minetta Lane Theatre and runs through Oct. 21. Tickets and information: swingstateplay.com
