Apple Hunters!

APPLE HUNTERS! is listed as the “feel-good” show in Artists Repertory Theatre’s season, presumably because “will lighten your heart and restore your faith in humanity” would have been too long. But that’s really what E.M. Lewis’s gorgeous new play does.

Director Zaina Salame gets the most from her cast. Together they bring Lewis’s play to life. In seventy minutes, the audience experiences a range of feelings, from despair to triumph. As always, the staging is inventive and inviting.

With quiet brilliance, E.M. Lewis’s heartwarming play about brotherhood, adeptly directed by Zeina Salame at Artists Repertory Theatre, drops breadcrumbs of meaning while also letting us make our own way through the rich woods of her characters’ memories and current-day troubles.

The entire cast is strong and Guerva provides a wonderful center—Noble is deeply likable and Alcalá is appropriately painful to watch. Most often, Matias assumes the script’s extra roles, which fits with his character’s fidgety humor. He signals transitions with changes as small as donning a wig or apron. The actor seems especially gifted at small movements that convey volumes. While playing an older woman, advising the friends on their apple quest, he places a hand on Paul’s arm with a gesture that says: This is hard, and you’re a good son.