Sam Hunter, the Moscow-born playwright, would have been quite OK with a cloak of off-Broadway normalcy for this project, having written a minimalist play — called “Grangeville,” no less — that continues his long-running project of importing rural Idaho themes into New York City theater.

To his delight, however, this isn’t going to be off-Broadway normalcy.

It’s going to star Brendan Fraser.

In a flashback to Fraser’s Oscar-winning performance two years ago in the Hunter-written film “The Whale,” the 55-year-old actor is embracing the surprise headliner role in “Grangeville,” scheduled for Feb. 4 to March 16 next year at the off-Broadway Signature Theater Company in Manhattan.

Hunter, 43, has no idea how the logistics will work: An actor of Fraser’s celebrity, winner of a best-actor Academy Award in 2023 for his portrayal of Charlie in “The Whale,” will try to fit his considerable talents into a limited-engagement depiction of lifelong Grangeville, Idaho, resident Jerry — on one of the Signature’s smaller stages, seating all of 192.

But somehow it’s going to happen, thanks to the friendship Hunter and Fraser formed in 2020 during the filming of “The Whale,” which Hunter adapted from his play of the same name under the protective directorship of Darren Aronofsky.

In fact, that setting was the birthplace of “Grangeville.”

Hunter, in his first major film project, spent the entire three months on “The Whale” set in upstate New York (filling in for Moscow, Idaho), tasked with duplicating as much of the intimacy of his play as he could.

There was a lot of downtime for him, during which he hunkered down and wrote the first several pages of a new play, examining the lives of two half-brothers who’d grown up in Grangeville and, after parting ways, are trying to resurrect their relationship amid their mother’s chronic illness. With Fraser hovering over production of “The Whale,” maybe it’s not surprising that Hunter instinctively used him as a model for one of the brothers.

But this was during the height of the pandemic, a time when New York theater had entirely shuttered. Hunter despaired of finishing the project, unsure of the future of theater itself. He put it aside, then resumed and completed it a few months ago, after theater had revived.

When his director, Jack Serio, asked if he envisioned anyone in particular to play Jerry, there was one inevitable response.

“I kind of wrote it with Brendan in my head,” Hunter, in a phone interview, said he told Serio. “I know that’s insane — that’s never going to happen. But why not?

“So I literally texted Brendan and I was like, ‘This is crazy. Please don’t feel any obligation whatsoever.’ He’s a friend at this point, and I didn’t want him to feel I was exploiting our friendship or anything like that. I was like, ‘I have this play, and you would be great at it.’ He said, ‘Send it to me.’ So I sent it to him. A few weeks later I was in London, and I got this big, long text from him. He had just read it, and he really responded to it.”

A few qualms remained. The play is a “two-hander” — just two characters — and the dialogue is voluminous. Fraser, as any actor would, expressed a bit of dread. But he tested the waters in a workshop of the play, with accomplished Broadway actor Brian J. Smith playing the younger half-brother, who lives in the Netherlands. Both actors came on board for the production.

“Brendan was just fantastic, just undeniably amazing,” Hunter said. “And from that he said yes.”

Hence another unplanned triumph for Hunter, who graduated from Moscow High School and has spent more than two decades in New York City. Much of that time, he’s been rooted on off-Broadway or more obscure realms, and his nearly 20 produced or soon-to-be produced plays include five that include a real Idaho or eastern Washington town in the title.

They include “Clarkston” (2015), set in the riverside Costco of that town, which is now playing a five-week engagement, until Oct. 21, at the Echo Theater Company in Los Angeles, without Hunter being heavily involved. In a good-sized review, it was described last week by the Los Angeles Times as a “small, absorbing and uplifting play.”

Hunter has done some writing for television and is open to more film work, but the pandemic and the Writer’s Guild of America strike in 2023 — together with his preference for literate, quiescent work — have kept him tethered lately to off-Broadway.

“I still feel very committed to the theater, as much as I love working in film and television,” he said. “TV is kind of a writer’s medium, but film is really not.”

The script for “Grangeville” isn’t publicly available yet, but it sounds like pure Hunter. Set in the remote Idaho County town of the title, at the foot of the mountains of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest, it dissects the lives of siblings who’ve met vividly contrasting fates.

Like other Hunter plays, it takes place in a distinctive Idaho town but is about something else.

“The play really happens in a kind of liminal space,” Hunter said. “Much of the play is either on the phone or over video chat. So it’s a very theatrical space. It’s really about these two guys sorting through the detritus of their very complicated past. I think it’s a play about forgiveness, if I had to really boil it down, and how we define people based on their past actions.” !

Grummert can be contacted at daleg@lmtribune.

Hunter to speak in central Idaho

Sam Hunter and other playwrights are scheduled to speak at a set of Sun Valley Playwright’s Residency events next month in the Wood River Valley of central Idaho.

The Moscow-born Hunter, who now lives in New York City, will lead a conversation at 7 p.m. MDT on Oct. 7 at the Argyros Performing Arts Center in Ketchum. He’ll be joined by Max Posner on the subject of the latter’s off-Broadway play “The Treasurer,” before a reading of the play involving four actors at 7:30 p.m.