InterAct Theatre Company presents Gabriel Jason Dean’s Rift: or White Lies

Jered McLenigan and Matteo Scammell trade off roles each night in this two-hander, with McLenigan playing Outside Brother and Scammell playing Inside Brother on the reviewed opening-night performance. (Ticket-buyers can return to see the opposite actors for a discounted price of $12.)

Twenty-six years, inside and out

When we meet them, Outside Brother is a senior English major whose burgeoning alcoholism endangers his scholarship. He’s making an overdue prison visit to his older brother, who has recently suffered a brutal beating in the shower. In four scenes, we witness the brothers over the ensuing 26 years.

Outside Brother finds success with an academic career and semi-autobiographical novels. Inside Brother, who rises in the ranks of a white supremacist gang (being pro-white isn’t racist, he says; “that’s survival”), perceptively criticizes his brother’s first book as moralizing and bemoans his status with the father they share: “You’re his golden boy. I’m his mistake.” The terminally credulous Outside Brother accuses his sibling of a lifetime of lies. “When I’m true, people leave,” the other argues.

They uncover their painful family history and find poignant notes of camaraderie in the past and present. The author puts his incarcerated brother on a diet of Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James Baldwin, books he grudgingly reads but must hide under his mattress. Outside Brother turns their visits into lectures and holds forth on the Paradox of Tolerance, “the accurate way to refer to a non-white person” (a member of the global majority), and race as a social construct.

Disagree, but listen?

Dean quickly sets up big questions in the story, and the early dialogue shows emotional promise and some comedy, bolstered by Scammell’s committed performance as the brash yet charming and surprisingly shrewd Inside Brother. But the play loses steam as it becomes increasingly self-referential, including a predictable turn to Outside Brother’s novelization of their story, despite the risk of being “cancelled for suggesting that people care about you,” as he says to his Swastika-stamped brother.

The fact that Outside Brother fears being cancelled (which, let’s be honest, for white men usually just means a few months off the lecture or comedy circuit while whining about mean tweets) over actually hurting anyone fits alongside the play’s apparent tackling of anti-racism as an academic self-improvement project, or bigotry as an acceptable difference of experience and opinion.

“We don’t have to agree. We just have to listen to each other and stay civil,” Outside Brother decrees. That might be true when racism is the subject of yet another theoretical deep dive between white people (and there certainly was no shortage of this perspective from shocked and chastened liberals in the aftermath of the 2024 election), but it’s a less appealing mindset when you’re the one experiencing the effects of bigotry.

Stark yet dynamic

Director Seth Rozin achieves a stark yet dynamic staging: the dialogue never feels static, despite taking place over a visiting-room table or videoconference, with layers of physical action. It’s nice to see McLenigan in a more naturalistic role after a few years of over-the-top performances in shows like the Lantern’s 2023 Tartuffe and recent Wilma offerings, and he and Scammell have believable rapport, especially when the latter drinks in rare family photos. These emotional beats get plenty of room in Rozin’s production.

Christopher Colucci brings an evocative mix of atmospheric music and scene-setting sound. Kyra Zapf’s costumes effectively bring the brothers through a decades-long dialogue that ages them both. The irregular angles of set designer Nick Embree’s hexagonal platform underscore the tension while a carpeted office and prison cell lurk in the background, where the characters retreat for choreographed costume changes that suggest their offstage lives.

Repeating the cycle?

Ultimately, the play’s mix of philosophizing, fraternal drama, and an underpinning narrative on abuse doesn't quite hang together, and ends up (literally) pointing us right back where we came from. A heavy-handed final tableau underlines the conceit of the alternating actors, perhaps broadcasting that the difference between the brothers is negligible after all.

But where does that leave us, for all the show’s talk about breaking a tragic cycle? This feels like another dose of relatively comfy white-centric theater, where the most challenging question on offer is whether or not we sympathize with a charismatic neo-Nazi—akin to that tireless quest by legacy media to humanize white supremacists instead of the people who are rapidly losing their Constitutional rights. Finding our way into loving people with abhorrent views seems less urgent right now than figuring out how to help those who are suffering because of those views.

For all its flaws, this production is grappling with topics that the MAGA regime is trying its best to erase, defund, and ban. But if we’re going to take collective action against fascism instead of marinating in the same old questions, plays like this are not going to inspire us.

Know before you go: this show contains references to child sexual abuse.