Chicago Tribune: Comedy asks: What do you do with the unsaved?

Chris Jones

Nov 4, 2009

Somewhere in the middle of Deborah Zoe Laufer’s ambitiously apocalyptic comedy “End Days,” the central mother character confronts an issue faced by anyone who believes in the rapture, or any kind of judgmental separation of the sheep from the lambs. What do you do if people you love won’t be saved?
Should you spend every last second trying to convert them and then, assuming you fail, abandon them on your way to glory? Or does true love require you to stay by their side, even if you’ll all be sharing hell on Earth ?

There’s a great deal worth thinking about in Laufer’s strange little play. When I wasn’t musing on the end days on my postshow walk, I was pondering another of this play’s more potent issues. How far you should go to indulge the religious convictions of someone you love, even if you think such convictions are harmful, erroneous or both? Does love require that you too believe?

If only the structure of this play could support the force of its themes. Laufer deals with a troubled little family — a mostly agnostic father (William Dick) who still feels the trauma of losing his colleagues in the Twin Towers; a mother (Laura T. Fisher) who hangs around with Jesus Christ (literally; he’s played by Joseph Wycoff); a rebellious teenage daughter (Carolyn Faye Kramer); and a nerdy teen in an Elvis costume (played by the guileless and charming Adam Shalzi) , in love with Kramer’s funky little Goth and working hard to please his rabbi.

All five characters are lost souls, replete with demons and, in some cases, imaginary friends. When he is not playing Jesus, Wycoff does a bang-up impression of Stephen Hawking (no easy task, of course), who scoots around the stage offering scientific chicken soup for the needy teenage soul, counterbalancing mom’s biblical preoccupations with compassionate metaphysics.

Thanks to some very solid and honest acting under the direction of Shade Murray, you become quite involved in this funky little band of seekers, and invested in their eventual discovery that they need each other more than they think — regardless of any rapture that may await.

But you can never quite believe they’re a real family. Laufer never sufficiently explains how these unlikely parents — who seem to be from very different socio economic classes — got together. You’ve no sense of their pre-crisis life. In the play, they always feel a bit too much like types designed to serve the play’s themes to be fully credible as flesh-and-blood individuals.

When you have the likes of the skilled Dick and Fisher investing their heart and soul in these folks, you can’t help but care.

But I went in and out of this uneven show, sometimes totally engrossed and sometimes on the brink of throwing up my hands.

When you start out with Jesus on stage, it’s tough to build from there.

The whole affair is too long — the last 20 minutes features especially woolly and ponderous writing. Murray’s otherwise carefully staged production is unattractively designed and generally underpaced.
And toward the end, the whole show seems to disappear inside a cheap, obviously fake television set, which needs to be stricken from the action, whether or not the end of the world will be televised.
Still, this one will get you going. At least “End Days” has the guts to deal with the end of the world and the relationship between existential truths and our oft-pathetic attempts to love each other in the middle of a black hole.

Edge Chicago: Review
...a lighthearted, fresh look into the ideas that make up evangelical religion, physics, the Rapture, and belief in general.

Laufer, herself a science-loving atheist, never lets these big topics overpower, and she achieves this by creating relatable, likeable and flawed characters who are all searching for some sort of meaning. Aren’t we all?

Pioneer Press: Preview - 'End Days,' examines faith, science and Elvis
The premise is reminiscent of a bad joke: Jesus, Elvis and Stephen Hawking walk into a bar...
But while "End Days" is certainly funny, it's far too outlandishly original to fit into the parameters of a predictably gauche one-liner.

Chicago Critic: New twist on religious fever a humorous fable
Who said religion can’t be funny?... Without being ‘preachy’ or condescending, End Days unfolds as a funny look at the role of faith in human relations. This show is hilarious and healing.

SteadStyle: Review
Faith and Renewal! ... a wonderful theatrical experience.  This is indeed a story of faith, not just in the religious sense, but faith in humanity and in family.

Examiner: O Holy Stephen Hawking? Next Theatre talkback to delve sacred and scientific
A standing savior, a sitting scientist –Who wins the debate in the Stein's fractured household? Wycoff answers with a quote from the Dalai Lama’s book Kindness, Clarity and Insight: "Different medicines are prescribed for different diseases, and a medicine which is appropriate in one situation may not be appropriate in another."

End Days was awarded The American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg citation in March, 2008. It received its NYC premiere at Ensemble Studio Theatre in March, 2009 through an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant. It debuted in October, 2007 at Florida Stage, The Phoenix Theater in Indianapolis and Curious Theater in Denver through a National New Play Network rolling premiere and will have received nine productions by the end of the year. End Days is listed in the Burns Mantle Yearbook as one of the best regional plays of 2008, and is published in The Best Plays of 2008.

“Who knew The Rapture could be so funny?" – Theatremania

"…rapturously funny play about a family trying to survive in a world hurtling toward Armageddon, proves that the right playwright can inspire healing laughter in even the most sobering subjects."
-The Miami Herald

"A satirical dark comedy with a moral edge."
"The universality of the denouement brings this comedy full circle, leaving us to admire the relevancy of Laufer's humor and wisdom of her message." -Variety


“Enormously funny, warm and uplifting!” - CurtainUp

"… both poignantly redemptive and often hilariously funny."
"I hope others will have the opportunity to see this special play. It begs the question of what we would hold most sacred if we knew the end was near. And it brings to life our broad range of choices, including laughter, and the treasured traveling companions who are there even when we face our own personal Armageddon." -The Huffington Post