Samuel D. Hunter has a gift for capturing the quiet ache of everyday lives. Continuing the themes of isolation and entrapment from his orca sized hit: The Whale, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning film that earned him a screenplay nomination, Clarkston focuses on two young men stuck in a small American town. Chris (Ruaridh Mollica) is trapped by poverty, Jake (Joe Locke) by ill health. The space they inhabit may be larger than in The Whale, but the suffocation is just as consuming.
On a journey West to rediscover himself, Jake lands a job in a rural Costco where he encounters Chris, a weary night-shift worker. The stilted smalltalk soon turns into a tentative friendship, and then morphs again into something more fragile and searching. Together, the pair nurture the idea that life could still hold meaning, and they could find themselves somewhere beyond the giant tubs of cheese puffs and shelves of discounted TVs.
Jake, a (distant) direct descendant of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame), is at once boastful of and burdened by his ancestor’s achievements. The comparison gnaws at him: where Clark found discovery and purpose, Jake feels hemmed in by illness and unrealised promise. “Everything has already been found,” he complains, frustrated that he will never get to leave his mark like his forefathers (or foreuncles) did. He dreams of reaching the sea, following his aforementioned great-great-great-great uncle's route across America. Though, deep down, he suspects he is already drowning.
The production’s staging, with on stage seating and minimal set, highlights that sense of confinement. Every glance feels exposed, every silence heavy with threat. The result is an atmosphere that mirrors the claustrophobia of small-town life, where dreams crash against dead ends and the horizon always seems impossibly far away.
The performances are quiet, nuanced, and deeply felt. Joe Locke may be the marketing draw, but the play thrives on chemistry, not celebrity. He and Mollica create a dynamic both tender and combative, a rhythm that pulls the audience into their shared vulnerability. Sophie Melville, who plays Trisha, Chris’s mother, steps into this charged atmosphere and ignites it. Her appearance is brief but volatile - emotionally raw, unstable, deeply vulnerable and quietly menacing.
Clarkston is a lyrical, heart-breaking meditation on self-acceptance and survival. Quiet, searching, and alive with possibility, it shows how even in the most ordinary of places, two young men can stumble upon something extraordinary. It is theatre at its most intimate. A quiet epic about finding hope in the middle of nowhere.