The Christians

Or: The Road to Hell

It’s a church, not a set. The plush purple velvet carpeting, the orgasmic explosions of white roses, the giant cross which seems to float and produce its own benevolent illumination, the projection screens scrolling inspirational vistas and foot tall lyrics for singalongs. The choir with its own archetypes, the majestical soloist with a soaring voice (Faith Howard), the grooving music director tinkering his praise out on the electric keyboard (Jaret Landon), the hopeful young singer bashful before his thousand strong family (Yando Lopez), that woman whose hands wave like strands of rapturous kelp (Jazelle Morriss), that smily guy in a sweater vest awkwardly plucking at a guitar and that one disturbingly peppy girl that bounces around like a lap dog. To those outside it’s a Megachurch, a boil of enlightened society, a shady corporation dealing in faith. To those inside, it is the corner stone of their world, the ark that will save them from the fiery fate reserved for the rest of us.

Such is the creation of K. Todd Freeman, director of Lucas Hnath’s sober story of Paster Paul (Tom Irwin) and his troubling sermon; a declaration that rends his flock of thousands and sets him at odds with charismatic and dangerously earnest Associate Pastor Joshua (Glenn Davis). Told in the style of a church service; song breaks, microphone amplified conversations and debates, and Hnath’s thumbprint of that smudgy first-person narration, Freeman has sponged away any trace of irony or satire that might have been lingering. If you come, come prepared to clap, to sing, and to mull. Hnath has created a play not about the accession or downfall of a character but about a simple idea, resonant to faithful and faithless alike, a thought-weevil that gnaws at your mind as surely as it worms though Pastor Paul.

Irving neatly captures the essence of a preacher concerned more with sweet waters and green pastures then fire and brimstone. An earnest baritone and a mellow face in a nice suit and a big honk’n cross pin, who wants to take care of you, but can’t quite escape the sniff of insincerity that curls off him. Handheld mic glued to his hand, his struggles of when to speak, and what, course through his body like lighting inside of storm clouds. Davis captures his opposite number, the augur made to bore holes through sin, shaking with fervor.The apostles probably possessed the same intensity and purity of purpose, but then so to did the Inquisitioners. Describing, late in the play, his preference for preaching without microphones, “My voice carries.” It was the most theatrical moment of the play, defiantly a “line” though a superb one, and it raised the hairs on my neck to see that Joshua meant all that it means. But running rings around all of them is the inhabited, heartbreaking performance of Jacqueline Williams as a congregant and member of the choir looking for answers and not liking what she finds.