LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD Previews- Page 3

[quizking101]

Posted: 10/24/25 at 1:50pm

gibsons2 said: "It's a pretty straightforward, not very original play. The analysis of Ethan's character some people are trying to do here is a bit too much, given how many times we've seen this petulant, insufferablearchetype in all types of media. The issue is in fact with the actor's delivery, the way he speaks and moves. None of these choices are helping. In fact, Micah's entire weird performance makes the play not believable and lacking any credibility."

You’re welcome to your opinion, but this is rather reductive. Actors build their craft on character analysis, so why is it an issue when we discuss it as patrons?

[HogansHero]

Posted: 10/24/25 at 2:16pm

gibsons2 said: "It's a pretty straightforward, not very original play. The analysis of Ethan's character some people are trying to do here is a bit too much, given how many times we've seen this petulant, insufferablearchetype in all types of media. The issue is in fact with the actor's delivery, the way he speaks and moves. None of these choices are helping. In fact, Micah's entire weird performance makes the play not believable and lacking any credibility."

It seems pretty clear based on what you have already written (multiple times) that it would be a fool's errand to try to convince you otherwise. So I won't. What I do want to point out, for the benefit of anyone who might be persuaded by what you say, is that I found Stock's work on Ethan to be extremely trenchant if not necessarily someone I would want to have dinner with. His "delivery, the way he acts and moves" is, to me and the others who you inappropriately label as "a bit too much" keenly observed and insightful (aided by Hunter's writing). I think all 3 performances are Tony worthy. You obviously didn't like it, which is of course your prerogative, but a bit more open-mindedness on your part would be a lot more effective.

[Sauja]

Posted: 10/24/25 at 4:21pm

That this season gives us this stunner and the exceptional Liberation at the same time is a gift. Two of the best plays in recent memory.

 

Count me among those who think Stock is doing remarkable work (as are Metcalf and Drea). I believed these people on a fundamental level. Which made the pivot from its more comedic opening to its deeply emotional final scenes hit me like a ton of bricks. Don't think I've cried that hard at a show since I first saw Fun Home.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 10/25/25 at 6:34am

Saw it from the second row last night. One of the best Rush seats I've had in a long time. Have to echo a lot of folks - Stock is awful. And drags the entire thing down.

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 10/25/25 at 10:48am

Saw this last night. I agree that Stock seems a bit over-the-top at times, however, I feel that's natural for the role. Clearly Ethan is modeled after Hunter himself, and anytime a playwright is writing a version of themselves into a play, the character is naturally a bit more exaggerated. Because they're often a reflection of how the playwright sees themself, rather than a true, more realistic, "original" character. So I think Stock amplifies well what was written on the page and it really didn't bother me. Sarah is also to an extent somewhat an exaggerated version of reality. It works in the context of the world they created.

With all that said, I actually found John Drea to be the strongest of the three.

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 10/25/25 at 11:18am

I thought Stock was marvelous. I felt he did a nuanced job playing a developmentally arrested man looking for a corrective emotional experience to heal his child wounds.  He would regress into childhood with both someone who wanted to save him (James) and someone who could not (Sarah). 
 

James probably has his own trauma from his “perfect” family as he clearly tries to fix people. He may be codependent. 

[HogansHero]

Posted: 10/25/25 at 5:27pm

Broadway61004 said: "Clearly Ethan is modeled after Hunter himself"

Is that correct? It seems pretty inconsistent with someone who was a celebrated playwright (and MacArthur grantee) during the period at which Ethan is portrayed in the play. Maybe I'm missing something?

@Betty I think you are spot on about the developmental issues. I also think it can be hard to watch, but that does not equate with an objective criticism of anyone's work here. Which is not to say that everyone has to choose it as something they are glad they sat through.

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 10/25/25 at 7:18pm

HogansHero said: "Broadway61004 said: "Clearly Ethan is modeled after Hunter himself"

Is that correct? It seems pretty inconsistent with someone who was a celebrated playwright (and MacArthur grantee) during the period at which Ethan is portrayed in the play. Maybe I'm missing something?"

Obviously Hunter was a celebrated playwright by the time covid happened, so in that sense, no. But he was at one point a young man growing up in Idaho, kicked out of school and ostracized when he came out, which by his own admission sent him in a deep depression and made him question what he could become as he struggled with the beginnings of his career as a writer. So no, I don't mean to imply Ethan is a literal representation of him, but clearly he wrote a ton of his own experience into the character and it was very much inspired by what he went through as a young man.

[Fordham2015]

Posted: 10/26/25 at 8:21pm

I was at today's matinee. I thought this was a good play elevated by three excellent performances. 

It's good to see Laurie Metcalf have a meaty role again after the disappointing Grey House. She lands all the zingers and her monologue near the end is very powerful. (Side note: I had tickets to see her in Virginia Woolf at the Booth in April 2020, RIP).

Micah Stock is also terrific, with his climactic breakdown a highlight. I don't understand the complaints about his voice, he sounded the same as he did in It's Only a Play to Me.

John Drea was unknown to me when I walked in the theater, but he holds his own with the other two leads.

Bonus: Walking out of the theater I saw Sarah Paulson coming out the stage door.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 10/26/25 at 10:02pm

I found Stock's performance to be the event here. Metcalf, superb, is working with a sliver of a regional demographic she's nailed in the past: she's an expert at finding the pulse of these take-no-prisoner women who've held up rural communities with their foundational values and core humanity. But going deeper, necessarily, the play's arc belongs to Stock, and the actor refuses to demand audience sympathy or love; he captures the broken, stalled adult who is at sea with complex challenges before him. I was fascinated by his freedom with his own body: his shirt open, flesh exposed, for a change to reveal a gay man without a trainer-disciplined physique who is an appealing human being for being so utterly recognizable. The play was slow to grab but crept up on me, and its final 20 minutes are remarkable. 

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/29/25 at 11:09pm

I had this on my ten best list of last year and tonight, I was reminded why. The play is just as good as it was in Chicago and I’m just so happy more people get to see it (and i get to see it again). Were it not for Manville nine blocks north of her, I think Metcalf easily could take the Tony this year and hopefully Stock will still have a chance come awards season. Like someone said above, the fact that we get writing of this caliber at the same time as “Liberation” is pretty extraordinary. 

[RippedMan]

Posted: 10/30/25 at 4:24am

Ugh so wish I could see this again. Glad it's finding a wider audience since Chicago. 

[quizking101]

Posted: 10/30/25 at 10:39am

Auggie27 said: "I found Stock's performance to be the event here. Metcalf, superb, is working with a sliver of a regional demographic she's nailed in the past: she's an expert at finding the pulse of these take-no-prisoner women who've held up rural communities with their foundational values and core humanity. But going deeper, necessarily, the play's arc belongs to Stock, and the actor refuses to demand audience sympathy or love; he captures the broken, stalled adult who is at sea with complex challenges before him. I was fascinated by his freedom with his own body: his shirt open,flesh exposed,for a change to reveal a gay man without a trainer-disciplined physique who is an appealing human being for being so utterly recognizable. The play was slow to grabbut crept up on me, and its final 20 minutes are remarkable."

I saw it again last night and BIG thumbs up to all of this. I actually sat front row (via Rush) as opposed to the end of the mezz like last time and I was GRIPPED, especially when:

 

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Stock pulls out his phone and begins to ignore his boyfriend on the couch. The boyfriend continues to attempt to get his attention, but Stock locks into the phone and has a very subtle facial twitch that showed he was thinking about responding to the boyfriend, but the alleged comfort of his static existence was too great and so he just holds fast until the boyfriend takes off in anger.

That broke me. He had a way out and he chose to deny himself joy.

 

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 10/30/25 at 11:13am

I was at the first preview and didn't post anything then because I needed to think about my very mixed response to Micah Stock. On the one hand, it's a great performance in the sense that it's very lived-in and specific and believable, and in all of his interactions with Metcalf it worked. On the other hand, the other half of the story simply doesn't work with this performance...which makes it a bad performance? The first scene in the bar between him and his love interest was so awkward and off-putting to the degree that it never made any sense that it would continue beyond that night. If it had been a failed encounter to show how damaged he was and a means to drop the information about his aunt having cancer and we never saw the love interest again, then I would have bought it. (But of course he's needed later to spur the final confrontation between Metcalf-Stock.) But his dysfunction was so extreme and there was absolutely nothing I could hang on to why this person would want to continue seeing him. Someone above suggested the love interest is codependent, or maybe we're supposed to believe the options for gay men in this smallish town are so limited that he couldn't reject him so easily. But while we as an audience had seen enough of Ethan prior to this scene to know he wasn't a threat, watching it from the love interest's perspective (especially given how short he was and how so much taller Stock was), I was distinctly uncomfortable. If I hadn't seen the character before this, I would have thought, "You need to back away slowly. This person is going to murder you." 

I'm all for body positivity and seeing a gay character who doesn't look like the norm, but he needed to be at least slightly less of a mess, or there needed to be something at all appealing about him to show why the Drea character continued seeing him. But there isn't, so while one half of the play is grounded and realistic, the other half is off in romance novel fantasyland, the kind, patient heroine sticking with the broody, damaged hero. Drea is doing great work in the kind of role that's typically underappreciated, since he has to convince there's any reason he could be drawn to this person, and comes far closer than he has any right to given what he's acting against. In the final scene between them, I know that I should consider it heartbreaking for Stock's character, but I was mostly watching Drea, and thinking, "Why are you still here? You need to leave him." And I was ultimately exasperated in how long it took to play out.

And once he was gone and we got back to the meat of the Metcalf-Stock plot the play righted itself again.

So yeah, I think half the play works and half doesn't.

Updated On: 10/30/25 at 11:13 AM