What I liked
This piece of theater deserves without any doubt a bigger stage and broader audience. Starting from a very simple and common topic, i.e. an affront to conflicts of interest within a religion, it has the power to deconstruct all book-smart sermons and fanatic religiosity in favor of a lived life and experiences. Freedom of will, the imperative of the modern society, to be protected at all costs, clashes with fear of God, the imperative of an older generation of society and religion, when submission and obedience were valued the most by men. Private VS Public. Life VS Afterlife. God’s instruments VS Devil’s puppets. All major polarizations and antithetical concept passed down by centuries of religious fanaticism and imposed power are deconstruct and questioned by the ordinariness and simplicity of life and common people.
Evangeline (a 16 years old girl) gives a sermon half-way through the play that every priest/pastor/religious leader should listen to and find their own answers to before speaking to any congregation. While Isaac (a priest/pastor/ religious leader-to-be) can only recite Biblical verses to defend himself and choices imposed by the public eye on his private life.
What I didn't like
I think some technicalities of the show could need some improvement:
- stage-lighting was the most distracting for me: the majority of the show happens in the corners, left in the dark, while the bright center is used only for monologues and soliloquies. It could be used instead as a strength to signify light and darkness in the characters’ arcs, sin and forgiveness, but it just left a lot of the performance in the shade, blocking all facial and some body communication from hitting the audience.
- volume, especially at the end, was too low and a lot in last scenes was lost due to luck of hearing Isaac’s final change and decisions, probably the most important ones to understand the ending, to close his circle.
- the use of cross upstage: I did not understand the presence and the use of the cross, since the characters pray and talk to God in the Sky, except for a very brief moment in the final “experience”. That is another potential symbolism I found lost to itself, instead of being used to tell the story in its totality.
I would also, personally, prefer a more grounded take on Evangeline: even if 16 years old and quite girlish, she is still the pastor’s daughter, raised by strict rules and knowledgable of the Script. Making her so naive and child-like does not underline, in my humble opinion, the strength she possesses, and she actually uses at the end of the story, telling his father and making a difference in her own life for her greater good. She seems instead the typical girl lost to a patriarchal and sexist power, in the figure of Isaac.
My overall impression
1-hour feminist drama exposing the internal bigotry and conflict of interest within any major religion. What is taught in books and sermons VS what is lived in one’s own daily life. When love and life is a sin, how do you live and cope with a mistaken good? Maybe it is not a mistake in the first place, but quite the opposite? How do you justify that in a strict doctrine of submissive fear and complete obedience?
