Paul Sparks and Brian J. Smith Photo by Emilio Madrid

Grangeville is Hunter's second in a series of three world premiere plays for Signature Theatre. The first, A Case for the Existence of God, which is arguably among one of the best American plays of the decade, focuses on two men, opposites in almost every way, but connected by their Idaho roots. The characters, who, as one explains, "share a specific kind of–sadness," find a form of salvation in their emergent friendship.

In many ways, Grangeville could be considered a companion piece to the former work. The new play, also a two-hander, centers around estranged half-brothers Arnold (Brian J. Smith) and Jerry (Paul Sparks), who manifest a similar sadness. They are also inextricably tied to Idaho (where most of Hunter's plays take place), even as one tries to escape it. The impending death of their cold and neglectful mother, however, has brought the two men together, and the suppressed anger and old resentments, metastasized by time and distance, surge forth.

Jerry, a father of two and separated from his wife, is an RV salesman, and he has recently moved back into his mother's trailer. Surrounded by memories of his absent mother and brutal father, Jerry numbs himself to the hurt. When his dying mother asked for his forgiveness, he automatically and impassively gave it to her. "And I thought about it later," he tells Arnold in a video call, "and I thought–shouldn't I have felt something?" Sparks, who replaced the originally announced Brendan Fraser, is heartbreakingly good. Jerry is often amusingly oafish and he calls himself dumb, but Sparks imbues the character with a rich emotional complexity that exposes the scars of being both an abused child and an abusive teen.

As Arnold, Smith is perfectly matched and is equally gut-wrenching. Unlike Jerry, Arnold is prone to rage, and he harbors deep resentments of his dysfunctional family life. An artist, whose early work involved dioramas of Grangeville landmarks and buildings, he is living with his husband in Rotterdam. But no matter the distance from Grangeville, Arnold cannot rid himself of the toxic recollections. He says, "It's like no matter what memory it is, no matter how seemingly innocuous it is, it always leads straight to shit. It's like being stuck in a maze and no matter what path you choose there's just black holes everywhere that you keep falling into."

The play is impeccably directed by Jack Serio, who injects the underlying pathos with healthy doses of humor (particularly with a recurring reference to a questionable Giacometti sculpture). Not only does he draw finely calibrated performances from Smith and Sparks as the half-brothers, but the two actors are utterly convincing when they briefly morph into the characters' spouses. Serio also skillfully balances the theoretical abstractness of the play, which Hunter has set in "a void and liminal space," with the psychological specificity of the intricately conceived characters.

The production design complements this conceptual approach. The set, by the collective known as dots, includes a vast, black stucco back wall with hard benches on either side. Upstage right is a single door and stoop one would expect to find on a rural home, but it is isolated and houseless as if it were in a Magritte painting. The sharp, angular lighting, ingeniously designed by Stacey Derosier, further conveys the feeling of a black hole in which Arnold is trapped. The only wormhole from this gravitation abyss, the play and designers suggest, leads to a life-sized version of one of Arnold's dioramas. The costumes by Ricky Reynoso and sound by Christopher Darbassie are similarly nuanced and effective.

In a press release, Serio said, "The idea of forgiveness is kind of a radical thing right now, and I don't see a lot of it on the American stage." Hunter's Grangeville is the perfect salve in these divisive and agonizing times in which acts of grace are so rarely to be found.