Tori (Marjolaine Whittlesey) is not scared of the world. She has a good job as an office manager at the Boston Globe, is not particularly political, and doesn’t even read the news. So she has nearly zero patience for her brother Hank (Corey Gagne) in rural New Hampshire, who has a lot of guns, worries about chem-trails, and plans to be “on the front lines” when the world “goes to shit.” Hank thinks Tori should be scared. Tori thinks Hank is scary. But when Hank is killed in a seemingly random shooting, Tori is drawn into an investigation of his death’s possibly shadowy circumstances, in Walt McGough’s False Flag, which receives its world premiere production as the season closer of Dramatic Repertory Company, under the wily direction of Cait Robinson.
Hank’s death starts to look like part of something bigger when Tori talks with Hank’s hard-ass ex-girlfriend June, played by a canny, mordantly funny Bess Welden in army drab. (From June’s very first entrance, as she stalks in and gives Tori a look that’s at once an alarm and a resigned, what-am-I-doing-here sigh, Welden is terrific, clipped and laconic.) Initially, Tori dismisses June’s theories. But soon, despite the warnings of friend and Globe reporter Sophia (the fine Sarabeth Connelly, savvy and sharp), Tori goes deeper into the mystery of what Hank might have known. As she does, she contends with mysterious packages, secret codes, and a range of men who may or may not be good guys — including a dude in June’s apartment, the owner of the shooting range, and a talk-internet celebrity — all of whom, as played here by the dynamically protean Gagne, bear her brother’s face.
