Review: Making a Beautiful ‘God’s Existence Case’


About a third of the way”A Case Regarding the Existence of GodThe heartbreaker of a must-see play by Samuel D. Hunter, one character, Ryan tells the other, to Keith, “I think we share a certain kind of sadness.”

Insight seemed almost comically unlikely if it came sooner. Ryan (Will Brill) is introduced to us as an inept vagrant: uneducated, desperate for money, scraping at a yogurt factory. Although she claims to be writing a novel, she doesn’t know what “sadness” means.

He doesn’t seem to have anything in common with Keith (Kyle Beltran), a nervous, button-up pro who uses the word casually. Financially savvy and culturally sophisticated, Keith holds dual degrees in Early Music and English. Listens to motifs for fun.

The fact that Ryan is white and straight and Keith is Black and gay also comes into play. If you were designing a new kind of magnet, you couldn’t make more neatly matched opposites.

But Hunter’s meticulous editing led us to the same conclusion when Ryan uttered to Keith what he saw as the key link between them. In a way, we are prepared to understand that the improbable statement is both strongly true and perhaps universal. The question is: What is the purpose of sadness that you can share but cannot escape?

“A Trial for the Existence of God” filed Monday a Signature Theater production Elegantly directed by David Cromer, it is another of Hunter’s public explorations of his own private Idaho: a post-explosive, existential expanse where emotional and economic collapse converge. Games played before Lewiston, boise, pocatello and others have dealt with people who haven’t been successful in the wasteland of Costcos, Hobby Lobbys, and Olive Garden sub-restaurants.

And while “A Case” makes the connection between personal and social disaster more clear than ever – could it just be an accident that it took place in Twin Falls? — it may also be the purest ever of Hunter’s approach to playwriting as an empathy experiment.

Ryan is the primary beneficiary of the experiment here. There is nothing grand about him, other than being human, that would suggest traits of a typical main character, heroic or terrible. Indeed, he came to Keith, a mortgage broker, with a very small dream in his pocket: to buy back the 12-acre property that once belonged to his family. By building a home there, he hopes to show courthouses considering divorcing his wife that he is stable enough to share custody of their 15-month-old daughter.

If Ryan is afraid of losing his child, Keith’s version of the same horror comes from a very different source. When the game begins, he has been trying to become a father for over three years, first through surrogacy and when that fails, through foster care which leads to adoption. The girl who is eventually placed next to him is the same age as Ryan – the boys met at their daughter’s day care – but the threat to Keith is purely external. A relative of the birth mother expressed interest in raising the child on her own at the last moment.

The two processes depicted in the game – getting a loan, adopting a child – are similar, at least for men who are outside the systems that control their destinies for different reasons. Ryan feels that “money is the only real permit I need to survive,” but is so naive about how it works that he’s never had one, suggesting sending photos to potential lenders to show he’s a “good guy.” Keith likewise dedicated his life’s happiness—his own legitimacy—to institutions that inherently devalue homosexuals, single men, let alone gay men.

As an adoptive parent myself, I must say that the adoption plan felt absolutely authentic in a way that rarely happens in games. Less banking land; I have experienced this too. As Keith quickly realized, only a loan shark could dream of risking a penny for Ryan.

But Hunter is in any case too complex a playwright to let us bask in the procedural aspects of the story – or for that matter, the awkwardly growing bond between the men – for long. He is more concerned with the misalignment of his needs and abilities; They can only help each other so much, as is almost inevitable for people who have been harmed in different ways. When you want Keith to be kind, he attacks you; When you want Ryan to face the facts, he can’t. And the world is not man’s friend.

Or is it at the end? While the title’s “case” isn’t proven, it’s nicely discussed with the surprising resolution suggesting that failure might not be the end of the story. This fine thread of optimism depends on the extreme finesse of Cromer’s production to reveal the enormous impact of its production. Much of the play moves in absurd fruitless whirlpools of repressed emotion, the scene flowing onto the stage without pause or direction, until it is no longer contained after so long retreating from emotion. Even then, Cromer reopens the lid as soon as possible; Why do we need to be cleansed when Keith has a panic attack?

The design is followed accordingly. The set by Arnulfo Maldonado depicts the cramped cabinet Keith occupied in his brokerage; Framed like a cell by the expanse of the Pershing Square Signature Center stage, it alone can cause a panic attack. The guys never get up from their chairs until the game suddenly develops towards the end, at which point the set evolves, producing an almost geological change in atmosphere. Brenda Abbandandolo’s costumes, Tyler Micoleau’s lighting, and Christopher Darbassie’s voice are equally subtle and expressive.

The same can be said for Brill and Beltran, they are always good on their own but never better or more compatible with an acting partner than here. Perhaps only when people are so comfortable together (the actors were roommates at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama) can discomfort be so realistically played and overcome. Even as they bargain over Hunter’s minor authorial tics—the way he sometimes turns gears to delay the next development—they fill every moment with a depth of emotion that lends itself to a quiet play, a comedy in many ways, the intensity of tragedy.

Yet it’s the kind of tragedy that hurts through hope, like the ground breaking up to get seeds. If Ryan started the game without knowing what “sadness” meant, he’d soon learn – like us.

A Case Regarding the Existence of God
At Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan until May 15; signaturetheatre.org. Working time: 1 hour 30 minutes.



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