Finding comfort
in a 'Busy World'
By Chris Jones | Tribune theater critic
September 20, 2007
"A church," remarks one of the characters in the new play "The Busy World Is Hushed," "is one of the few rooms in the world where terrible grief is not unwelcome." Not only is that a true statement, but it's also atypical of contemporary off-Broadway drama.
Keith Bunin's sincere and highly literate new drama, though, is one of that small but welcome group of plays in which people of faith -- people of the cloth, even -- aren't portrayed as naives, hypocrites or predators. You certainly wouldn't call the current show at the Next Theatre in Evanston a socially conservative play; after all, two of the three characters are gay. But it's an honest probing of the place in the world for religious belief, even in the face of the overwhelming empirical evidence assaulting the literal truth of its narrative and precepts.
If you're the kind of thinking, believing person who was ever
soothed by C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity," you'll find ample food
for thought here and more than a little succor. Like Lewis and in direct contrast
to, say, Christopher "God Is Not Great" Hitchens, Bunin both makes
a liberal, intellectual case for Christianity and probes the dangers of its
obfuscations.
He does this by sticking three disparate, needy souls in a room with stained
glass.
Hannah (Peggy Roeder) is a progressive Episcopal minister and academic who sees the logical holes in the argument for faith, but persists nonetheless. What Hannah doesn't see, though, is the effect of her rapacious intellectual surety on her struggling adult son Thomas (Erik Hellman), who has never fully recovered from the death of his father. The third part of Bunin's romantic and filial triangle is Brandt (Dennis Grimes), who shows up to ghost-write Hannah's book and becomes enveloped by this mother-and-son emotional and intellectual tag team, even as he deals with the terminal illness of his father.
What with doubting Thomas and so on, this neatly structured play will strike some as too neatly structured. The dialogue can be precious. And one metaphor -- that of coming home -- is repeated so many times in such tortured fashion, you want to stand up in your seat, declare its full comprehension and beg for its immediate cessation.
But thanks to a simple but very honest production from Kimberly Senior, those flaws don't spoil the evening. The highlight of the night is Hellman's angst-ridden performance, which struck me as a dead-on rendition of the frequent condition of the children of smart, liberal, dominant, overarticulate parents.
Equally superb in the Court Theatre's "Arcadia" last season, the fabulously energetic Hellman is one of the most exciting young Chicago actors currently working. Shrewdly cast as an opposite, Grimes offers a rich, halting performance as a shy but seeking fellow.
I don't think Roeder, who is not ideally cast, fully captures Hannah's supposed hyperarticulation. But she surely captures her aching heart.
Plays such as this invariably conclude there's a place in the world for mystery, and Bunin's drama, which opened Monday before an attentive audience, is no exception. But I like Bunin's play mostly because it's willing to talk frankly about our need for comfort. It seems intellectually dishonest to overlook the illogicality of God merely to feel better, but it may also be an imperative of human life.