Review: Close Encounters Of The Ethical Kind Converge In STOREFRONT CHURCH

In his preface to STOREFRONT CHURCH, the final installment of his Church and State trilogy (following Doubt and Defiance), John Patrick Shanley poses the following question as the thematic platform for the play: "What is the relationship between spiritual experience and social action?" It is a worthy question, for sure, one response to which we have seen played out in the streets of American cities, most notably in the civil rights struggle and led prominently by impassioned men and women of the cloth.

However, as the drama unfolds, the source question seems to have been displaced by a nevertheless relevant focus on the moral consequences of mindless activity and organized greed, as personified by the play's central characters, each of whom is convincingly depicted in Theatre Artists Studio's current production, adroitly directed by Carol MacLeod.

In Shanley's earlier works about hierarchies in America, the church and the military were at the illuminator end of his probing microscope. In STOREFRONT CHURCH, banking is the culprit and the church, or a feckless variation thereof, is an impotent bystander to a system that takes no prisoners.

In the wake of the financial meltdown that left overleveraged homeowners underwater and vulnerable to foreclosure, couples like Ethan Goldkland (Bill Straus) and Jessie Cortez (Larissa Brewington) are filled with a sense of entitlement but hungry for forgiveness. Their chocolate cake-sweetened appeals for relief to an overwhelmed, despondent and compliance-driven loan officer, Reed Van Druyten (Steve Fajardo), are denied. Matters get complicated when it's revealed that Jessie, under the money gun, has rented the first floor to Minister Chester Kimmich (William Mosley), only to realize that his plans to open a church are in limbo, that he's delinquent in making payments, and that he sits in the dark waiting for God. Understanding that when the system screws you, it's time to screw the system, Jessie appeals to the president of the Bronx borough, Donaldo Calderon (Dominik Rebilas), to intervene. Here lies a story of wounded souls at a crossroads in their lives.

Shanley brings these conflicted parties together in the makeshift chapel for a final resolution that attests to the power of self-interest and the relative ease with which one's morality can bend. In these confines, it doesn't take a village or require divine intervention to drive a hallelujah moment. The real deus ex machina is Tom Raidenberg (Tom Koelbel), a smarmy bank executive, who has solutions up his sleeve that take Ethan and Jessie off the hook. Even the angels, it seems, will make a deal with the devil if the price is right and the can of indebtedness can be kicked down the road.

Carol MacLeod has created a taut and well-paced interpretation of STOREFRONT CHURCH. Her cast delivers the goods, balancing wit and intensity to produce a provocative reflection on the limits of morality. The show runs through March 12th.

Photo credit to Mark Gluckman

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