History Professor / Perfume Maker / EMT 1 Mystery Novelist / Librarian / Florist / Friend / EMT 2 Hardware Store Owner / Perfume Maker / History Professor / EMT 1 POLICEMAN– (early 30s to mid-40s) Pete, maleįLORIST– (mid-30s to mid-40s) Heather, female
PERFUME MAKER– (early 30s to mid-40s) Martin, male WAITRESS– (early 30s to mid-40s) Jen, female LIBRARIAN– (mid-30s to mid-40s) Renee, female YOUNG WOMAN– (early 20s) Florence, female MYSTERY NOVELIST– (early 60s) Georgette, female HISTORY PROFESSOR– (early 60s) Harold, male HARDWARE STORE OWNER– (mid-30s to mid-40s) Charlie, male GRAVEDIGGER– (mid-30s to mid-40s) Earl, male PHOTOGRAPHER– (mid-30s to mid-40s) Suzanne, female It’s a great play for our troubled times, and MCT’s production offers a welcome dose of compassion and respect for the troubled fellow travelers.5-16 total: From up to. Michael Wright, who helps imbue the characters with intricately wrought humanity.
Personal ads and all, The Few is Matthew’s refuge from a cruel past, and Bultman is heartbreaking in his tenacity to get the paper out on time. MacDonald Kerr plays QZ with the hard edge of a pragmatist-a Mother Courage of the interstate, perhaps-but reveals her heart in the care she shows for Matthew (Mitch Bultman).īultman, who is making his local major theater debut, give his character touching honesty and vulnerability. Watch him listen-early in the play-to a personal ad phone message from “Cindy.” He routinely types her message, then stops dreamily as her rambling story becomes more than ad copy-a familiar tale of a lost and lonely soul. Ridge plays Bryan with great attention to his damaged spirit and his passionate resilience. But the beautifully rendered characters give The Few its richness and kick. The story-and the described hardships of the long-haul life-is familiar enough, perhaps. As such, The Few-though it was written in 2013-resonates profoundly with these Trumpian times. Hunter is a native of Idaho, and his celebrated plays are often unflinching looks at the struggles of working-class “middle-Americans”-both economic and existential. His business partner, QZ (Mary MacDonald Kerr) has kept it going in the meantime, but with the changing times-and the absence of Bryan’s idealism perhaps- The Few has become mostly an interstate meet-market. He has fought the good fight, creating and fostering a community by starting and fighting for a newsletter that attempted to connect and ennoble his cross-country comrades. Mary MacDonald Kerr and James Ridge.īryan (James Ridge)-one of the real people onstage-has done his time on the highways, and when we meet him at the beginning of The Few, he’s returning to his home base after going AWOL for several years. There are three real people in The Few, but they live among those who exist mainly in the thoroughfares between places, living life at 70 miles-per-hour-nomads without a tribe. Intimate relationship not mandatory, but welcome!”Įven though the play is set in 1999, these messages are a haunting reminder of the mediated isolation of contemporary life-the tenuous connections made and unmade. Instead, we meet them through ghostly phone messages-personal ads to be printed in The Few, a magazine for long-haul truckers: “Billy here looking for a female co-driver with at least two years’ experience. But unlike the misfits that inhabit plays like O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh or William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life, they are not really there. Hunter’s play The Few, playing now through March 19 at Milwaukee Chamber Theater. Quite a crowd of characters populate Samuel D.
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