Review: The Harvest Brings a Slice of Small-Town Montana to New York City

The Harvest, now at the Chain Theater, comes to New York via Harve, Montana, starring company members from Montana Actors’ Theatre. Going in, I was intrigued to see what this play would reveal about lives very different from my own. While playwright/director Jason Pyette sets up the elements of a great American family drama, it doesn’t pull them together in a cohesive and exciting way.

The set up is promising. Sarah (Tylyn Turner) has called her brothers home to help with the harvest. The Carthege family farm needs a successful crop to stay afloat, and Sarah thinks seeing the brothers working together will help their dad (who is never seen onstage) recover from a heart attack he suffered the previous year.

Sarah’s brothers have been scattered to the wind for quite some time. Micky (Brian Gregoire) took off to L.A. to pursue acting and hasn’t been back much since. James (TC Knutson) also moved out of town, as did Alan (Dr. Grant Olson), though he’s such a jerk that no one misses him much. Samuel (Aylan Pratt) broke up with his long-term girlfriend June (Samantha Pollington) to join the army. Only John (Chad Zuelke) stayed home to help dad with the farm.

Anna (Pam Veis), their mom, is unhappy to see them all. She knows she needs help, but at the same time, she’s overwhelmed, depressed, and resentful. This is an interesting tension to mine, but it’s overshadowed by various arguments. Two brothers fight over a woman, two more squabble over control of the harvest, and everyone hates Alan. Each disagreement is touched upon, but none are pulled to the front to become the main conflict.

Some of the actors bring more depth to their role than what’s on the page. Pratt  gives us nuanced emotion as Samuel tries to connect more honestly with his ex-girlfriend and his family, to varying degrees of success. Gregoire is also appealing as Micky, though huge questions about the motivation behind his actions go unanswered. Olson is an effectively annoying Alan, though he’s mostly only given that note to play.

Pollington, as the one outsider, works overtime to make us feel for June. The effort is appreciated, but because June seemingly has no life beyond the Cartheges, it doesn’t feel authentic. Turner similarly tries to give Sarah agency, even as she is steamrolled by the rest of her family. Veis gets some laughs with deadpan humor, but Anna is an inconsistent roe, erratically vacillating between emotional unavailability and deep understanding.

Throughout, Pyette brings up compelling ideas that miss the mark due to their lack of examination. Sarah is consistently belittled and resented by her relatives, though she’s the one trying to save the farm and the family. The fact that Sarah is under near-constant attack points to larger ideas about gender and class in this microcosm of society, but it’s so underdeveloped, it doesn’t congeal into real stakes, let alone a bigger revelation.

Pyette’s direction doesn’t help us focus either. Characters come and go, bring in food that is quickly abandoned, take bills and eviction notices out of boxes and put them back in again, and generally attend to stage business that doesn’t feel natural or grounded. This is unfortunate, because the production elements are quite strong. Pyette’s set is intricate and specific, stocked with items you’d find in homes that haven’t been updated since the ’70s. When characters pull frames off the walls, there are bare, clean rectangles underneath. The costumes by Angela Riggin are similarly detailed, down to the dirt on the character’s shoes. Matt Springer’s original music is used well.

The Harvest aims to show the challenges and triumphs of real rural Montana, and there are glimmers of an important and necessary story here. But the stakes just aren’t clear or intense enough to make for a persuasive evening of theater.