Darkly funny ‘Bright New Boise’ hits close to home at CdA’s Modern Theater

Samuel D. Hunter’s “A Bright New Boise” is likely going to play differently for Coeur d’Alene audiences than it did for audiences during its theatrical runs in New York and L.A. The play is set entirely in the break room of a Hobby Lobby craft store in Boise, and it deals with themes of fundamentalist religion while also developing a comic portrait of 9-to-5 retail drudgery.

“It’s very different to watch it from the perspective of something that could have happened right here,” said the show’s director Heather McHenry-Kroetch. “It’s going to be closer to people’s lives here, and closer to the things they talk about and think about.”

McHenry-Kroetch is also quick to note that the play, which opens at the Modern Theater Coeur d’Alene this weekend, is decidedly R-rated.

“There’s a lot of language,” McHenry-Kroetch said. “That might make (audiences) more uncomfortable than the subject matter. It has all of the words that might upset them.”

It seems appropriate that a potentially divisive show would take place in a Hobby Lobby, which itself represents a lightning rod of controversy (Hunter wrote the show before the firestorm surrounding the retail chain’s health insurance policies). But the characters in “A Bright New Boise” don’t represent political mouthpieces; they’re just there for the paychecks.

“The break rooms are filled with religious literature and things like that, but it’s the new guy coming in who’s bringing those beliefs,” McHenry-Kroetch said. “They’re not the banner holders for Hobby Lobby; they just work there.”

That new guy is Will (Doug Dawson), who’s being offered a job by high-strung store manager Pauline (Emily Jones) as the show opens. Hunter immediately concerns himself with the foolish personal pursuits that sometimes develop in a particularly mundane workplace: Will is desperate to befriend a younger co-worker named Alex (Maxim Chumov), himself the subject of many romantic gestures from fellow employee Anna (Hannah Paton).

But the plot takes a turn when Alex’s brother Leroy (Robbie French) discovers Will is fleeing from a dark past, discovering that Hobby Lobby’s newest hire was once involved with an extremist religious organization in Rathdrum that has been recently embroiled in scandal.

“It’s a dark comedy,” McHenry-Kroetch said. “There are definitely places to laugh, but I think it’s really going to depend on the audience. There’s stuff that’s uncomfortable enough that they may not want to laugh.”

Hunter, who was raised in Moscow, Idaho, is navigating some tricky material here, and he does it without descending into farce or rendering his characters cartoonish. “A Bright New Boise” is as much about missed personal connections as it is the possible danger of wielding faith like a weapon.

“I think it’s hard for people to say that you have choices about what you believe, because that’s a personal thing,” McHenry-Kroetch said. “But you do have choices about your actions and how you relate to other people. If you’re using your beliefs to avoid relationships or to treat people badly, then that’s a choice you’re making.”