Clarkston: On the Trail
Each crippled in his own way, Costco stock boys Jake and Chris find comfort as workmates, friends, possibly lovers, and certainly fellow travelers
Thrown together on the night shift at the Costo in Clarkson, Washington, Jake and Chris are looking for any way out. Recently diagnosed with a debilitating disease, Jake has run away from his seaside Connecticutt town and too loving family. Chris, a hope-to-be writer but actual damaged son of a meth-addicted mother, can’t shake the thought that he’ll never escape his dead-end life here beside the Snake River.
Michael Sturgis and Sean Luc Rogers (Photo by Cooper Bates)So begins Samuel D. Hunter’s West Coast premiere of “Clarkson,” now playing at The Echo Theatre Company through October 21st. A MacArthur Fellowship winner, Hunter’s prolific output–19 plays produced in 15 years–often draws together threads of spirituality, questions of sexual identity, and search for love set in the flyover Pacific Northwest of his upbringing. His “A Great Wilderness” that played two years ago at the Rogue Machine Theatre is a delightful example.
Each crippled in his own way, Jake (Michael Sturgis) and Chris (Sean Luc Rogers) find comfort as workmates, friends, possibly lovers, and certainly fellow travelers, ultimately together escaping the traps their lives have laid for them, at least for a moment.
Tasha Amers, as Jake’s drug addict mother Trisha, completes a deeply affecting trio, each actor utterly believable as the characters they play, the two young men stocking shelves at Costco and the still-young mother talking just a tad too fast for someone who claims toe be clean and sober. Indeed, “Clarkson” feels less like a story some playwright concocted out of a fever dream than a very real slice of a life that someone has led.
A year after first producing “Clarkston” in 2016, Hunter wrote “Lewiston,” a standalone companion named for the town on the Idaho side of the Snake River, both plays and towns named for the infamous Lewis and Clark Expedition that passed through the region in the early 1800s.
The Echo Theater Company @ Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village. Through October 21. Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 2:00.
