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.
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