Review - The Christians

When I saw Lucas Hnath's The Christians at Humana Fest last year, it was my favorite play of the festival and one of my favorite theatrical experiences of 2014.  When I saw that it was on Playwrights Horizons' season for this year, I knew I wanted to see it again.  I am really a huge fan of Hnath's writing, plus I wanted to see if my original impression of the play held up.  I went to see one of the final previews last night.

Yes, my original impressions DO hold up!  Here is what I said in 2014:  Our last play, on Sunday afternoon, was Lucas Hnath's The Christians.  I've seen several of Lucas's plays by now and I really enjoy his voice and the way he tells a story.  And this play was no exception - The Christians was my favorite piece of the weekend.  I am always interested in stories about faith and religion, since I'm always questioning my own, and this story was so compelling and utterly realistic.  He had me from the very start - the play begins as a church service, complete with choir and a pastor giving a sermon.  The set is on-point and looks like many contemporary churches I've seen.  In the pastor's first sermon, he starts telling a story and my brain begins to go in a million directions.  But the pastor goes into a completely DIFFERENT direction and hello, there we have my first brain blast.  I absolutely love when that happens.  There were many brain blasts throughout The Christians - I found it so thought-provoking and original.  The characters all were honest and sincere, no one's religious beliefs were ever mocked or satirized.  The ruminations were all truthful and interesting, often very funny, and ultimately very touching.  "Don't try to figure it out now, it will all make sense later" (more paraphrasing from me).  There were actually a lot of lines that just made me think "WOW."  I am so enamored of Lucas Hnath's writing - I can't wait to see what he brings us next.

My review for last night's performance would be basically the same as what I said in '14.  Even knowing the central conflict and plot progression of the play going in, I was still completely engaged and enthralled throughout the evening.  There were so many questions and ideas being tossed around and I especially loved that there were no real answers given.  Every character had strongly held beliefs and very clearly and cogently presented them.  I especially loved how you could listen to one character explain their position and think, 'oh, right, I see that,' and then another character would explain their opposite position and still think, 'oh, I can see that, too!'  But not in a wishy-washy or pandering way, but in a thoughtful, there are at least two sides to every story kind of way.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Each character was written with, and acted with, such truthfulness and dignity.  The utter truthfulness also resulted in quite a bit of humor.  I empathized with all of the characters - with the pastor, who just thought he was making things better for his congregation with his change of heart, but instead tore people apart (his breakdown at the end and his whispers to God were just heartbreaking); with the associate pastor, who wanted to believe what the pastor believed, but his life experience wouldn't let him; with the single mother congregant who just wanted to understand, but who also wanted to make her new boyfriend understand (the scene between the pastor and the single mom was just so sharp and so well-written; there was so much juicy good stuff in there, I wish I could remember it all); with the pastor's wife, who is loyal and supportive, but realistic and true to herself at all times.  Each character had to make choices and sacrifices because of their beliefs - everyone tried to come together in reconciliation, but real connection was next to impossible.  The stakes are really high and the tension is too.

I guess as someone who was sort of raised in a church, but sort of not, I find stories of faith, religion, the nature of religion and the lengths people go to defend their beliefs very compelling.  And since we're living in times that are so fraught with divisiveness and hostility when one person doesn't believe what another person does, I think The Christians goes a long way to illustrate how good people can disagree, despair about disagreeing, yet still respect each other's point of view, no matter how wrong they think it is. 

Audience-wise, it was an interesting crowd.  I could hear one gentleman, as he was walking into the theater and seeing the set, say "Oh my god, today of all days, that's the set I have to look at?"  I wanted to yell over to him, 'hello, the show is named The Christians, what did you expect?'  But I didn't.  The guy in front of me said the set made him feel all judge-y.  (I thought the set was terrific.)  The guy behind me said he listed to 'Jesus on Spotify' all day, to get ready for the play (he said to his pal, "did you know there are like 50 versions of a song called 'How Great You Are'?  I didn't").  There was a gal who raised her hand in praise when the choir sang and bowed her head in prayer when the script called for it.  So it was interesting to see how engaged (or not engaged - the guy next to me fell asleep about twenty minutes in) the audience was.  For the most part, they seemed to be on board and open to these philosophical, religious and totally human debates.  Oh, and I enjoyed how the discussions and opinions extended to the lobby and the bathrooms in the theater (closing the door in the bathroom and seeing a great quote from Helen Keller got my evening off to a fine start).

There's so much going on in The Christians that my mind is sort of still swirling, so I'm sorry if this is an incoherent review that doesn't really tell you anything.  All I can say is I found so much to think about, struggle with, and enjoy in this play.  It's such a treat to feel invigorated by smart, original writing.  And I especially liked reading Hnath's notes in the playbill.  I think I'll insist you go see the play so you can read them for yourself...