Laurie Metcalf as Sarah and Micah Stock as Ethan in Samuel D. Hunter's Little Bear Ridge Road , directed by Joe Mantello, Booth Theatre. Photo: Michael Brosilow. Watching Samuel D. Hunter’s Broadway debut, Little Bear Ridge Road , which was first staged last year at Steppenwolf, I found myself reflecting on how complicated it must be to be effectively branded America’s national poet of heartland bleakness. This has been Hunter’s inevitable lot, at least since the film of The

Oedipus , created by Robert Icke after Sophocles. Mark Strong (Oedipus) and Lesley Manville (Jocasta). Photo: Julieta Cervantes The British directing star Robert Icke specializes in contemporary adaptations of classics. He writes and directs them, proudly insisting that they only deserve attention if they hold their own as current plays. No foreknowledge of the originals should be needed. “When you deliver a classic,” he says, “your primary responsibility is to try and catch

Archduke by Rajiv Joseph, directed by Darko Tresnjak, Laura Pels Theatre. L to R: Patrick Page, Jason Sanchez, Adrien Rolet, Jake Berne, Kristine Nielsen. Photo: Joan Marcus. The farcical premise of Rajiv Joseph’s play Archduke —just opened at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre—is that the young men who sparked World War I by assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand were actually starving, terminally ill consumptives bribed and duped into becoming suicidal terrorists. The