When 16-year-old Rosie announces that she’s decided to become a nun, a fastball game of hilarity, hubris, and humility spools out among her family members in Jon Klein’s new play, Faithless. Religion is no small issue to the members of this strong-minded clan. Each of them has staked out a territory.
Stepfather Gus Stanton has spent his life as an outspoken atheist. Son Calvin became a Protestant minister, and daughter Claire teaches comparative religion at a local school. They’ve all dug into their beliefs deeply, but as a series of crises punctuate this sharply etched play, Klein’s four characters find their worldviews challenged and realigned.
Gus (Ron Litman) calls a family council of his adult children to dissuade the impressionable Rosie, who was adopted from a Catholic orphanage as a youngster, from her proposed headlong rush into a cloistered life. The twice-divorced Claire (Patricia Hurley) can hardly believe that Rosie (Hannah Taylor) would choose celibacy. Like her stepfather, Claire is a skeptic until, recovering from a head injury, she conjures visions of the beautiful beyond. Calvin (Ben Blackman) neatly skirts questions of sexuality but Catholicism is not his choice. Outwardly smooth and self-satisfied, Calvin, too, totters with tremors of doubt.
Unseen but omnipresent is Gus’ late wife, who died recently of COVID, leaving the family unmoored and a tad accusatory. Mom’s Bible sits on the mantelpiece. When confronted with it, Gus, a career insurance man, counters with an actuarial table — which he insists is the only source of human truth. That Bible is far from done, however. By the play’s quirky end, it has come back to bite nearly everyone in different ways.
Steven Carpenter directs this sparkling new drama at the Washington Stage Guild’s Undercroft Theatre. Klein provides him with first-rate material. The playwright’s sure-fire dialogue combines lofty questions with very funny analogies to popular culture. Watch how he references time-shares, dodgeballs, crowbars, and “Little House on the Prairie” as his all-too-human characters slug it out.
Calvin reminds Gus that Fifty Shades of Grey has vastly outsold the Scriptures. What does that say about human nature? Yet, Klein also infuses the play with references to James Joyce’s canonical 1916 novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Gus claims that his failed attempt to read this book in his own youth paved the way to his atheism. Returning to it as an elder, he dissolves in tears.
Scenic Designer Gisela Estrada provides a handsome and flexible set to accommodate the play’s quick-changing scenes. Costume Designer Cheyenne Taylor Hill cloaks the characters in an assortment of russet tones at the chummy beginning of the play. Later, as the tension brews, their costume changes morph into sharper, more individualized coloring before culminating in shades of black.
Knowing chuckles permeated the theater as patrons perhaps recalled their own familial struggles over religion. Klein’s incisive take on the subject — always witty and generous of spirit — would be well worth watching before your own clan sits down to its next holiday dinner.
Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
Faithless plays through October 20, 2024, presented by Washington Stage Guild performing at The Undercroft Theatre at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC. Prices are $50 for Thursday evening performances and Saturday and Sunday matinees, and $60 for Saturday and Sunday evenings. Students are half-price, and seniors over 65 get a $10 discount. Tickets can be purchased online.
Cast and creative credits are here.
COVID Safety: Masks are recommended (not required). Washington Stage Guild’s complete Health and Safety Policy is here.