Mishka Yarovoy, Denise Cormier, and Travis Anderson in Little Bear Ridge Road at TheaterWorks Hartford.
Rob Ruggiero directs TheaterWorks Hartford’s production of Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road. Set somewhere outside Troy, Idaho, this production explores love and what it means to be present.
Ethan (Mishka Yarovoy), a young, gay man, is forced to settle his estranged father’s estate during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This leads him back home, where he coordinates his efforts with his aunt, Sarah—his late father’s sister (Denise Cormier). Sarah and Ethan learn each other’s boundaries, push against them, and reestablish their understanding of family as they maneuver their respective expressions of grief and coping with loss. Their lives, adjacent to each other, explore love. For Ethan, this exploration begins with an awkward meet-up that turns into a budding relationship with James (Travis Anderson), a young man in pursuit of the stars, showing Ethan that sometimes the best things in life are out of this world.
Cormier and Yarovoy, two sides of the same coin, play well together—their expressions of humanness, between joy, grief, defeat, and calm, beautifully characterized against the truth of the awkwardness and vulnerability in our respective humanity.
Matthew Richards’s lighting design and Camilla Tassi’s projection design accent the simplistic but stunning set design of Michael Schweikardt. The set, a living room couch with a ceiling light, unwraps the story at the forefront, while what looks like a big strip of note paper homes the scenic projections that escort audiences between the locations in which each scene unfolds. The shift between homes and the bar is aesthetically pleasing. Still, the night-sky projections over the tones of human connection are the most stunning, reminding us of the beauty of simplicity and the love it fosters.
This production of Little Bear Ridge Road emphasizes a time in our collective lives when humanity felt furthest from our reach, even as we needed it most. Against the backdrop of a new age in our technological era, when so many things seek to replace the need for humanity, this reminder of the moment that made us yearn for another hand to hold serves as a guiding light to remind us, in whatever decisions we face, to choose humanity.
Little Bear Ridge Road runs through November 8, 2026. For tickets, visit https://twhartford.org/
