The true believer

Photo: Michael Brosilow

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Who: Actors Theatre of Louisville
What: The Christians by Lucas Hnath
When: March 4 – April 6, 2014
Where: 38th Humana Festival of New American Plays

When the lights come up on Lucas Hnath’s compelling idea-rich drama “The Christians,” the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Pamela Brown auditorium is instantly transformed into the sanctuary of a typical Christian mega-church, complete with video screens, an organ, and a choir. 

In front of the choir is a pulpit and five chairs, each with a microphone and stand.  All the action will take place in this space, and all of the dialog will be delivered into those microphones.  This, for the playwright, is a way of emphasizing the fact that a preacher's life is "constantly on public display.  The moment you make a mistake, people are very hard on you."

As the play begins, the members of the choir file in and launch into Jennie Wilson’s upbeat hymn “Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand.” The title will prove to be ironic.  Paul (Andrew Garman), the church’s pastor, is about to preach a sermon that proposes a fundamental shift in his congregation’s philosophy.  Like the apostle Paul, he has changed his mind in a radical way.  As the repercussions of that sermon play out over the next 75 minutes, it becomes clear that doctrinal change can be a very dangerous business.

The sermon starts innocently enough.  Paul talks about how the church has grown from its humble storefront origins to an organization with a congregation of thousands, classrooms for Sunday School, a coffee shop in the lobby, and a baptismal font as big as a swimming pool.  Better yet, the church has finally paid off its building loans, thanks to the generosity of its members.  But there's a problem.

"There's a crack in the foundation of this church," he warns.  "And I'm not talking about the building. I'm talking about something like Isaiah talks about, Isaiah 30 verses 12 and 13 'Because you have rejected this word' 'this word' that's God's word he's talking about 'And relied on oppression and depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging'."  Mending that crack, though, will involve abandoning what other members of the congregation—most notably assistant pastor Joshua (Larry Powell)—regard as a fundamental tenet of their faith.

Paul and Joshua debate their differences in front of the congregation and while their argument is courteous enough, their beliefs are irreconcilable.  Paul forces a vote by the congregation, which Joshua loses badly.  He leaves the church, slowly and sadly exiting offstage.  But, like his Biblical namesake, he will return to tear down some walls.

The vote doesn't take place on stage.  Like most of the action of the play, it happens offstage and the characters tell us about it.  What happens onstage is a series of arguments between Paul and those close to him—his wife Eilzabeth (Linda Powell), a church elder named Jay (Richard Henzel), Joshua, and choir member Jenn (Emily Donahoe) who has questions about Paul's new/old theology that he can't adequately answer.  That might sound like a recipe for a play that will be more didactic than dramatic, but Mr. Hnath (whose "Death Tax" so impressed me back at the 2012 festival) is too good a writer for that.  His characters are so well drawn and his refusal to take sides is so scrupulous that those exchanges crackle with energy and passion.

As the play progresses, Paul's problems multiply.  Ultimately, he finds himself asking the question which far too many believers seem to ignore: how do you know where your beliefs really come from?  Is that voice in your head God's, Satan's, or just an echo of your own? "I believe what I believe because I know it is true," Paul says towards the end of the play, "but why do I know it's true?—it's a feeling. And where did that feeling come from?—God. God put it there—but how do I know it's God that put it there?—I know it's God because I believe God is there—but how do I know God is there?" 

To say that "The Christians" is thought provoking is to praise it inadequately.  The philosophical and spiritual questions raised by this meticulously written and dramatically gripping play generated lively discussions among our party.  As I prepared to write this review today, my wife and I found ourselves coming back to many of the ideas in the play’s intellectually rich script.  It was one of the best plays I've seen anywhere in recent years.

The performances by the fine Actors Theatre cast did full justice to Mr. Hnath’s dialog.  They were completely comfortable with the microphones, using them as extensions of their bodies, and were fully invested in their characters.  Even the members of the choir were distinct individuals, sketching diverse personalities in the way they sang and in their reactions to the debates on stage.

Les Waters's direction made good use of the space, especially during the confrontation between Paul and his wife.  As Paul paced around on the carpeted dais downstage of the chairs, swinging his microphone cord, you could see him taking on his public persona and shutting her out.  The show was well paced and, despite its argument-counterargument structure, never felt static.

Will "The Christians" have a life beyond Humana?  It certainly deserves one.  Smaller companies might have to finesse the choir, but on the whole it should be well within the capabilities of most groups.  Congratulations to Actors Theatre and the festival for continuing to give us smart, well-crafted scripts like this one.

Christian values

Les Misérables promotional video

What: The 25th Anniversary Production of Les Misérables
When: October 16 – 28, 2012
Where: The Fox Theatre
When: October 16-28, 2012

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The 25th anniversary production of Les Misérables is a few minutes shorter than the original and makes clever use of sophisticated video projection technology that wasn't available in 1985, but it's otherwise every bit as much of a well-oiled theatrical machine as it was the first time I saw it back in the late 1980s.

From the opening prisoners' chorus (moved, in this smart new staging, from a prison yard to a slave ship) through the sublime finale three hours later, the show's canny combination of a conventional but memorable score, compelling characters and situations (the source is, after all, a literary classic), and fluid staging (made even more so by the projected video) grabs and holds your attention and emotions. It remains, in my view, one of the most effective pieces of musical theatre of the late 20th century. No wonder it's now the world’s longest running musical, dethroning the seemingly eternal Cats.

Based on the Victor Hugo novel, Les Misérables focuses on the conflict between the former jailer Javert and the ex-convict Jean Valjean. The former is inflexible, fixated on sin, and sees himself doing God's duty by punishing the wicked. The latter is compassionate, unselfish, and understanding. He's convinced God gave him a second chance so that he could help others.

When Javert prays, it’s for vengeance. When Valjean prays, it’s for someone else’s life. Valjean is pursuing the luminous ideal, Javert its dark opposite. Both claim to be Christian. When, in the final moments, the chorus sings “to love another person is to see the face of God”, there’s not much doubt about which side the show favors.

It is, in short, a powerful refutation of smug self-righteousness and laissez-faire ruthlessness, both of which have been poisoning domestic political discourse for many years. Its appearance locally just a few weeks before an election that pits “every man for himself” against “we’re all in this together” could not be more timely.

As Valjean Peter Lockyer shows not only a ringing head voice and well-integrated falsetto (not surprising, given that his impressive credentials include a stint as Marius, a role that lies more in the tenor than baritone range) but solid low notes as well. He’s a little less physically imposing than I’d expect for a character who is supposed to have nearly superhuman strength, but he’s so thoroughly invested in the role that I quickly set that aside.

Andrew Varela looks every inch the stocky and brutish Javert and matches it with a powerful voice. He brings a bit more depth to the character than I have seen in some previous performances, which greatly enhances his confrontations with Valjean and makes his eventual suicide (beautifully staged here with the help of a flying rig) that much more plausible.

As Fantine, for whose early death Valjean is an unwitting catalyst, Betsy Morgan makes the transition from fresh-faced and healthy to downtrodden and dying very effectively, and the deathbed scene in which Valjean promises to make amends by protecting her daughter Cosette is appropriately moving (don’t come to this show without a hanky). Lauren Wiley is most winning as the adult Cosette, while Hannah Isabel Bautista as Little Cosette had a nice star turn on opening night with “Castle on a Cloud” (she alternates in the role with Abbey Rose and Erin Clearlock).

Max Quinlan’s Marius is charming in his early scenes and, more importantly, convincingly tragic in “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”—sung here on a bare stage with Marius surrounded by the ghosts of his fallen comrades from the barricades of the ill-fated 1832 revolution (hanky time again). Brianna Carlson-Goodman is a particularly intense Éponine, dying of unrequited love for Marius and, eventually, a National Guard bullet. “On My Own” (a favorite with young musical theatre singers) is the character’s big Act II number and she makes the most of it.

Timothy Gulan and Shawna M. Hamie play the comic villain roles of Thénardier and Madame Thénardier (those champions of enlightened self-interest) a bit too broadly for my taste, but they do so with such perfect consistency that I expect my quibble is with director James Powell (who otherwise seems to have made excellent choices) rather than with the actors. Besides, the opening night audience loved them.

Other strong performances include Marcus D’Angelo’s courageous urchin Gavroche (he alternates with Joshua Colley) and Jason Forbach’s doomed Enjolras, although in the final analysis there’s really not a weak link anywhere.

New staging ideas aside, much of this new Les Mis looks familiar. The biggest change is probably the absence of the turntable and the use of the aforementioned video projections to provide a sense of movement in key scenes. That’s particularly noticeable in the Act I finale, in which the actors appear to be marching through the streets of Paris, and in the progression of Valjean and Marius through the sewers in Act II. Fans of the show will be happy to see that none of their favorite moments are gone and that some (such as Javert’s suicide) have been enhanced. The sound mix—always an iffy proposition at the Fox—was quite good, at least from where I sat in row F.

“The Christian ideal”, wrote G.K. Chesterton in 1910, “has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” Certainly both Victor Hugo’s novel and the musical based on it are testaments to how difficult it is, while our current political culture seems to demonstrate what happens when it’s left untried. I’d like to believe that a show like Les Misérables can change hearts and minds, but given the infinite human capacity for compartmentalization and denial, I’m not sanguine about that notion.

Still, this is a moving and entertaining show regardless of your political color, and I just can’t recommend this new production highly enough. Go see it. It’s fun. It’s a terrific story and it’s filled with great music. And if it convinces you that we really are all in this together, so much the better.

Les Misérables continues at the Fox in Grand Center through October 28th. For more information: fabulousfox.com.