When I moved to Vero in the 1980s, I used to joke there were more of those pun-filled changeable church marquees per capita than anywhere in the world.
Since then, the town has seen its share of schisms, from run-of-the-mill two-timing to doctrinal shifts, as when the local Episcopal church fractured over, among other things, gays entering the priesthood.
Schism would seem to be the theme of “The Christians,” the excellent production on Riverside Theatre’s Waxlax Stage. In fact, the play runs deeper than sin or doctrine, and cuts to religion’s essence: the tether of faith.
Turns out that tether isn’t as secure as it may seem in the sanctuary we share with the five Christians on stage. The increasingly talked-about playwright Lucas Hnath (pronounce Nayth) has masterfully scripted a work that builds to great emotion when the safe haven of a megachurch sanctuary, celebrating its first Sunday debt-free, blows up over the preacher’s sudden rejection of hell.
The sermon begins calmly enough. Handheld mike in hand, Pastor Paul repeats a missionary’s tale of a boy dying to save his sister from a burning building. At first, he used that preacherly ba-dum-pum cadence that gives show-biz piety its punchlines. Now, though, he is genuinely moved, anguished even, and pulls back from what we expect will be some standard-issue parable. Instead he delivers a reasoned zinger at the missionary who witnessed the tragedy and said, How sad that he couldn’t have converted the boy first so he could go to heaven.
But no. This boy could not be condemned to the flames of hell, Paul counters. He didn’t deserve it. Even God agrees, coming to Paul – while he was sitting on the toilet – to tell him the flames of hell are a fiction; hell is already here, on Earth.
With that resolved, Paul informs his congregation of the change, as if he were writing a memo on eternity leave policy. Serenity around him begins to shatter in slow motion.
One by one, the waxen expressions melt in reaction to the preacher’s revelation. In a well-wrought, unmocking portrayal by Brian Myers Cooper, who returns to the Waxlax after his role earlier this season as Claude in “An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf,” the pastor faces a mutiny.
The church’s rapid rise now comes under suspicion; would the pastor have made his beliefs known while all the fundraising was going on? And what about free will? No one can stop parishioners from following associate pastor Brother Joshua (compellingly played by the elegant Ryan George). The notion of justice and punishment appeals to Joshua, even though his stance meant dooming his own mother at her deathbed, at least by his own faith – or imagination.
Even Pastor Paul’s wife is outraged, her sudden strength revealed by actress Vanessa Kai as she rears up off her pew like a lily opening in speeded-up video. We’ve thought of her as a passive beauty until then, Paul having fallen in love at first sight of her, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, he says. Now she demands to know how her husband could have held from her such a secret as this rejection of hell. Her trust eroded, she can’t stay with him any longer.
The mild-mannered elder, played by Mitch Tebo, seems to be supporting Paul. But it’s he who finally breaks down and asks the real-world question: Were parishioners swindled in this deal, having bought into a church they thought included damnation?
And then, from the side of the Waxlax audience, rises a modestly dressed young congregant, played by Sebastian’s impressively talented Jewel Blakeslee. This was Blakeslee’s professional debut; a performance apprentice at Riverside, she graduated from Florida Southern College in acting and technical theater. Apart from the cheer that went up at her curtain call, you would never have known this was a debut at all with a strong and moving performance.
Riverside’s Allen Cornell, the producing artistic director and CEO, consistently delivers serious plays well in this intimate space.
He also designed the set, which conveys a certain menace in its sharp angles and ’80s gold-rimmed glamor that includes a tackily back-lit cross.
Though he’s now in New York and writing prolifically, Hnath’s roots are here in central Florida. Raised in Orlando, he was a member of an Assemblies of God congregation and went to Christian schools. He won’t say now what his beliefs are, according to a New York Times profile in 2015; it followed Charles Isherwood’s very positive review. And he says the play’s lead character Paul could have just as easily been inspired by Creon in “Antigone” as the controversial ministers in the news then. But he did say he conferred on the challenges of leading a flock with an old high school friend, now the minister at Maitland Presbyterian Church.
In fact, his own mother became a minister during his childhood, and the Times says he thought about doing the same. Instead, Hnath studied dramatic writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, earning both a BA and an MFA. Now a resident playwright at New Dramatists, he teaches at NYU. He received a Guggenheim fellowship and last year won an Obie award in playwrighting for “Red Speedo,” which also won an Obie for performance.
“The Christians” premiered in 2014 at a new play festival in Kentucky; it was subsequently staged off-Broadway in 2015 and in Chicago last year. It was nominated for two 2016 Drama Desk awards, one for the play and one for its lead, Andrew Garman.
Next week, Hnath makes his Broadway debut with a new play, “A Doll’s House: Part II,” his imagined sequel to the Ibsen play.
Like Hnath, Cornell knows his audiences. While both believers and non-believers will appreciate this play’s themes, it’s fair to note those church marquees are getting more and more scarce.
Census figures show that while the number of church-goers in Indian River County barely changed from 2000 to 2010, the number of people saying they had no religious affiliation more than doubled, and now stands at 52.7 percent. That’s even with a sharp rise in the number of congregations, from 81 churches to 121. Somehow they must not having much marketing success.
That should not be the case with Riverside. “The Christians” plays through April 9.
