Five Mile Lake

lake, dock

(photo: Greg Seitz, Creative Commons license)

McCarter Theatre’s final production of the season, Rachel Bonds’s new play, Five Mile Lake, explores the differences and similarities between two pairs of young people. Brother Rufus makes a surprise visit to the “small, somewhat desolate town near Scranton,” bringing his Manhattan girlfriend (Peta) with him. His brother Jamie works in a coffee-and-muffin shop and talks about hockey to his co-worker Mary, whom he is obviously desperate to talk love to. The small town and the lake and the old house he’s fixing up are his world, but Mary just wants to get away. All of them, on the cusp of full adulthood, are settling into their lives, and, looking at what’s ahead, they’re filled with satisfaction or horror.

As in life, everything is not as it seems. The brother who “got out” is facing an abyss of failure on all fronts. His supposedly successful girlfriend also feels the loss of possibilities. The young coffee shop worker who wants to leave believes she’s held back by her brother, but her own shrinking ambitions hem her in. All the characters except Peta have known each other essentially all their lives, and the dynamics among them spring in many directions.

Bonds’s dialog is modern and witty and totally believable. Totally. It’s delivered with precision and heart by a super cast. Kristen Bush, who was outstanding in McCarter’s recent production of Proof, is Mary; Tobias Segal is a moving Jamie, saying much with every body posture—the polar opposite of the constrained Octavius Caesar he portrayed in McCarter’s season-opener, Antony and Cleopatra. Nathan Darrow’s Rufus breezes in from the big city reeking of success that soon becomes the stink of something else. Mahira Kakkar is the girlfriend, desperate to talk about her real situation, and finally, Jason Babinsky is Mary’s PTSD-afflicted brother Danny, manic and wheedling. On stage until May 31. Watch for this play in your area—90 minutes of excellent drama.