“Little Bear Ridge Road,” a new and well-reviewed American family drama starring Laurie Metcalf as a tough Idaho nurse whose determined isolation is punctured when an estranged nephew comes to town, will close on Dec. 21, eight weeks earlier than scheduled.
The play is notable as the first produced by Scott Rudin since he stepped away from Broadway in 2021 over bullying allegations. Rudin, always a tough-minded producer, decided to cut the run short.
On Friday morning, he was steadfast in his commitment to producing more theater. “Of course!” he said in an interview. “Plenty of wonderful shows don’t work commercially for various reasons that sometimes were knowable and sometimes weren’t. I’m thrilled we did it; I love the play; I love the production. I would do it again.”
“Little Bear Ridge Road” is the playwright Samuel D. Hunter’s first work to reach Broadway. Hunter — whose plays often explore down-and-out denizens of Idaho, his home state — is best known for “The Whale,” which was adapted into a 2022 film starring Brendan Fraser, who won an Oscar for his performance.
Reviews for “Little Bear Ridge Road” were overwhelmingly positive. Laura Collins-Hughes, in The New York Times, called it a “keen-eyed, compassionate play” and deemed Metcalf “glorious.”
But the grosses have been insufficient, as Broadway audiences continue to flock to shows with better known titles and better known performers. The box office peaked at $528,181 the week after opening, and has been slowly sliding since, to $422,091 last week, when only 68 percent of seats were filled. The show costs a little more than $500,000 to run each week.
“The answer to ‘why it did not work’ is ‘not enough people wanted to see it,’” Rudin said. “It’s a really rewarding evening. I just think there’s a lot of competition for people’s attention, there’s a lot of competition for people’s money, and the economics are pretty cruel.”
“If there’s a lesson,” he added, “Broadway’s hard.”
“Little Bear Ridge Road,” a darkly comedic play touching on television, Covid, sexuality and social isolation, began previews on Oct. 7 and opened on Oct. 30 at the Booth Theater; it had been scheduled to run until Feb. 15. At the time of its closing it will have played 27 preview and 62 regular performances.
The 95-minute play, directed by Joe Mantello and co-starring Micah Stock, was commissioned by Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, where it was staged and critically praised last year.
Rudin is a co-producer of the play with Barry Diller; there are no other investors. He said the play was capitalized for $4.1 million — a relative bargain on today’s Broadway — and has not recouped those costs, but with the help of a New York state tax credit will get part way there.
Rudin next plans to produce an Off Broadway production of a new Wallace Shawn play, “What We Did Before Our Moth Days,” early next year, followed by a Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman,” starring Nathan Lane and Metcalf, next spring.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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