Rift: A powerful piece on brotherly love and hate
Given that his brother he visits at the start of the play has already served four years of a life sentence for murder, no wonder. The fact that his elder sibling has a Swastika tattoo on his chest and is a leading light in a white supremacist group behind bars is something of a shock to the wet liberal system.
Over the next two decades the irresistible rise of the younger as a writer sees both men learn much from each other. As they forge some kind of uneasy truce over the pains of shared history, however, it doesn't take much for those old bonds to break.
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Dean has produced a devastating piece of work that uses the trappings of a prison drama to posit a piercing debate on racism, sexuality, loyalty and betrayal. Drawn from his own experience of having a brother in prison, Dean utilises the intensity of a one-cell setting in the way the likes of a Sidney Lumet might.
The result in Ari Laura Kreith's stark and stripped bare production by the New Jersey based Luna Stage company goes beyond its set-up to show off some of the awfulness of a polarised culture war in ugly close-up. As Outside Brother, Blake Stadnik shows off the development from boy to man as he grows in confidence. As Inside Brother, Matt Monaco is a mercurial dervish who shows off his own emotional complexities as he ages with a resigned demeanour in a slow-burning clash of values amidst the pains of confinement.
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Rift review – can a liberal and his white supremacist brother ever see eye to eye?
Families fell out over Brexit. They split over Trump. But few schisms can have been more severe than that of playwright Gabriel Jason Dean and his brother. It is a relationship that inspired this probing two-hander in which a bookish student at the start of a literary career (Blake Stadnik) visits his incarcerated sibling (Matt Monaco), hoping to help with his legal claim for release. As their meetings unfold over years and then decades, one becomes a celebrated champion of liberal values, while the other emerges as a white supremacist. What hope for reconciliation when each brother has views antithetical to the other's? It is a theme that was explored by Chris Thorpe in Confirmation (2014), which described the playwright's real-life attempt to see eye to eye with a Holocaust denier. That play was needling and unsettling in a way this one is not, but what Rift has on its side is the fraternal bond at its heart. With head shaved and swastika tattoo showing beneath his orange jumpsuit, Monaco frightens you with the ferocity of his stare and his air of volatility. In contrast, Stadnik could hardly look prissier with his neat business suit and ethical reading list. Yet these men are not strangers and cannot entirely discount each other. Their childhood history, in particular their repressed memories of abuse, gives them a bond that transcends matters of political difference. Directed with verve and intensity by Ari Laura Kreith for Luna Stage and Richard Jordan Productions, the play is at its most affecting when it reveals the vulnerable boys behind the damaged adults. If there is hope for a polarised culture, this is where it lies. There is humanity and understanding here – joining a far-right brotherhood may be a rational choice if your life depends on it – but Rift lets the audience off lightly by skirting the most awkward questions. At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 24 August. All our Edinburgh festival reviews
The Herald Scotland
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Rift: A powerful piece on brotherly love and hate
Brotherly love - and hate - are at the heart of Gabriel Jason Dean's play, which charts the twin journeys of two siblings who respond in very different ways to the emotional baggage they carry with them. The younger begins as a nervous college kid, full of liberal idealism but still awkward around grown ups. Given that his brother he visits at the start of the play has already served four years of a life sentence for murder, no wonder. The fact that his elder sibling has a Swastika tattoo on his chest and is a leading light in a white supremacist group behind bars is something of a shock to the wet liberal system. Over the next two decades the irresistible rise of the younger as a writer sees both men learn much from each other. As they forge some kind of uneasy truce over the pains of shared history, however, it doesn't take much for those old bonds to break. Read More: Dean has produced a devastating piece of work that uses the trappings of a prison drama to posit a piercing debate on racism, sexuality, loyalty and betrayal. Drawn from his own experience of having a brother in prison, Dean utilises the intensity of a one-cell setting in the way the likes of a Sidney Lumet might. The result in Ari Laura Kreith's stark and stripped bare production by the New Jersey based Luna Stage company goes beyond its set-up to show off some of the awfulness of a polarised culture war in ugly close-up. As Outside Brother, Blake Stadnik shows off the development from boy to man as he grows in confidence. As Inside Brother, Matt Monaco is a mercurial dervish who shows off his own emotional complexities as he ages with a resigned demeanour in a slow-burning clash of values amidst the pains of confinement. For festival tickets see here
