Anna Burnside reviews ‘a nuanced and moving piece’.
One brother is a Stanford professor who writes novels. The other is a white supremacist in jail. Writer Gabriel Jason Dean could be accused of using wildly sensational and unlikely material if Rift was not based on his own family’s experience.
The result is Orange is the New Black, with men, reconceived as a family tragedy.
Dean distils and dramatises his own experience into a nuanced and moving piece that pokes about in the sticky stuff of family history. We drop in on the siblings at various stages of Inside Brother’s incarceration and see the progress of their relationship as Outside Brother goes from reprobate student to academic stardom.
It’s rich in comedy, plot and ideas. Karl Popper’s Tolerance Paradox, James Baldwin and RuPaul’s Drag Race are all namechecked. The theme of generational abuse is seeded throughout.
Matt Monaco is a tremendous jailbird, full of bragadoccio and swastika tattoos. Blake Stadnik has a harder job, being quiet, defensive while squaring up to a brother who also inherited considerable smarts but has chosen to deploy them in very different ways.
Ari Laura Kreith’s direction is taut and perfectly paced. Cunning lighting, projections and a low-key soundscape give the floor space at Traverse Two strong carceral energy.
More like this please.
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Rift performs at Traverse Theatre (Traverse Two) until August 24, 2025. For performance times and details, go to the company’s website.
Photo by Valerie Terranova.
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