Next's 'Hush' will get you talking
Pioneer
Press
September 13, 2007
By ROBERT LOERZEL Contributor
On one level, "The Busy World Is Hushed" is a play about religion. Keith Bunin's play, making its Chicago-area premiere at Evanston's Next Theatre, includes talk about the Gnostic gospels.
On another level, "Busy World" is a play about a gay romance. Two of the three characters are men who fall in love.
But both of those descriptions oversimplify the play and miss the main point.
"There is a love story between two men, but you wouldn't call it a gay play," says Jason Loewith, artistic director of Next Theatre. "It's taken for granted. It's a play about faith, and it just happens to have as two of its main characters a couple of men who are in love."
What about the religious theme? Director Kimberly Senior, a Bucktown resident, says, "It definitely sparks a lot of debate, but it's not solely a play about religion."
Senior and Loewith see "The Busy World Is Hushed" -- which takes its title from an Episcopal benediction that views death as a peaceful end -- as a play about the complexities of human relationships.
The play won rave reviews last year in an Off-Broadway production. The Hollywood Reporter called it "a theatrical miracle: a complex, thought-provoking look at why religion, faith, and the human heart can't always be reconciled."
In "Busy World," an Episcopal minister named Hannah studies the Gnostic gospels, early Christian texts that were later rejected by mainstream churches. Hannah hires a young man named Brandt to ghost-write her book, and he ends up falling in love with Hannah's estranged son, Thomas, who doesn't share his mother's religious faith.
Senior sees parallels between the issues raised by the Gnostic gospels and the play's personal relationships.
"There were all these different voices trying to assert what were the true words of Jesus," she says. "So much of what the people in the play are trying to do is figure out the true story. We all personally have myths about ourselves, either that we've created or other people have created about us. Trying to understand who you are is all tied in with that."
The play stars Peggy Roeder
as Hannah. "She's a powerhouse," Senior says. "She really brings
an intellectual authority to Hannah."
Dennis Grimes, who plays Brandt, "is super smart and analytical, just like
his character, who is trying to piece together what's right and wrong in the
world," Senior says.
Erik Hellman rounds out the cast as the doubting Thomas. "He's so funny and warm," Senior says. "It's a great triangle in that way."
Senior is a founder of Collaboraction Theatre Company, an artistic associate with Strawdog Theatre Company and an artistic associate at Next Theatre, though this is the first show she has directed at Next. She has given Loewith advice on past seasons, co-directed a workshop production and even worked once as an assistant lighting designer at the Evanston theater.
She says she's excited to
direct at Next because "The Busy World Is Hushed" carries on the theater's
tradition of presenting plays that get the mind going.
"Every time I've been an audience member at Next, I've left the theater
talking," Senior says. "It's a provocative theater -- not necessarily
shocking, but you leave there wanting to talk about the plays."