So why did the Oratorio end up making me sad? Repetition, as Christian tells us, is a factor of measurement and meaning, and during the Oratorio I became fixated on the tiny differences between this production and the earlier, seemingly identical 2022 production. (There is a time for everything, and perhaps the pandemic, oddly enough, suits the Oratorio.) Evans again instructed the performers to smile often, to look us in the eyes as they sang. Three years ago they looked like churchgoers shaking hands in the pews, but now there's been a shift—maybe our heightened sense of crisis, maybe their higher level of polish—and that bland niceness may seem a little cloying. As the show continues after a great first hour, the last thirty minutes become cheesy. “If you're here, you should change your clothes,” someone sings, and to me at that moment it sounded more like Sunday school than Sunday service.
Christian has long had an interest in church clocks, and she has written several works celebrating the old canonical clocks, including the extraordinary Tersia 2024, which will be performed at nine in the morning, and the broadcast Tersia 2024, which will be performed at nine in the morning.Basic“, which you should listen to at 6 A.M. Following the logic of the breviary, I believe that the Oratorio should be returned at regular intervals; each repetition will inevitably change it again. Even now, I think about the show's amazing beginning, which somehow erases my memories of the less satisfying ending. Time moves on continuously, Christian's libretto proclaims, and this is her version of good news. “We are in the middle,” Christian assures us. “We are not at the end of the cycle.”
In “Oh Happy Day!”, Jordan E. Cooper's own biblically inspired play that plays at the downtown public house, a very different kind of pseudo-church service takes place. The frustrating but sometimes beautiful production, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, acts as a kind of prayer for one – a simultaneous baptism, prodigal return and apotheosis of Cooper himself.
The playwright and actor, who was nominated for a Tony Award two seasons ago for Ain't No Mo two seasons ago, plays Keyshawn, a man who has returned home under duress: He has, in fact, recently died, but his spirit must complete a task before he can go to his reward. Thrown onto the streets as a teenager, long ignored by his homophobic father (Brian D. Coates) and estranged from his sister Niecy (Tamika Lawrence) and her son Kevin (Donovan Louis Bazemore), Keyshawn has been divinely directed to somehow save them all from the flood (capital F implied) that is about to wash them away area in Laurel, Mississippi. Keyshawn is, of course, furious that God wants him to put aside his very serious grudges to save his family. Why did his father never look for him, especially after he learned that Keyshawn turned to sex work to survive? But God, who appears in the form of each of the Keyshawn family members, will not hear “no” for an answer.
The show is hosted by three angelic “Divines” (Tiffany Mann, Shelea Melody McDonald and Latrice Pace) dressed in shimmering purple evening gowns. (Queen Jean designed the costumes, some of which playfully glow.) The Divines keep Keyshawn's spirits up by performing several new pieces written by gospel composer Donald Lawrence, who deftly integrates the language of stage performance into his lyrics. “If you want to change what you see…reboot!” The deities sing as brightly as the trumpets in Jericho while Keyshawn rearranges theatrical props—say, the chair he just tossed across the yard—to re-enact a particular family meeting. The play, too, repeats these gestures, sometimes tediously: Keyshawn repeatedly turns against his family's callousness, only to be punished by a vision of God. The goal is Keyshawn's final cry. Luckily, singing helps the rest of us go up, up, up.
It's amazing that this fall so much material suddenly appeared about the theater, but about the church. New York Theater Workshop recently produced Sia's musical Saturday Church, which features a strange ballroom version of the service in which J. Harrison Gee presides as Black Jesus and the dancers regularly tear off their choir robes; Playwrights site Horizons has just premiered Jen Tullock's solo play No One Can Take You From God's Hand, about a woman who leaves her abusive religious upbringing only to admit she is homesick for her faith. And at Ars Nova, the brilliant “pastor's kid” writer and actor Brandon Kyle Goodman plays both preacher and hilarious sex educator (think Mister Rogers wearing both a cardigan and a cardigan). And fetish equipment) at the insanely sex-positive Heaux Church. Their gospel includes fun educational interludes using doll genitals (Floppy, the purple penis struggles with shame), as well as active congregational participation, including some hands-on activities using glazed donuts.
In this city today you cannot swing a censer without hitting someone who, although raised in the Christian church, does not feel at home in the service. It is no coincidence that so many projects are decidedly strange reconstructions of its structures and decorations. Everyone appreciates his musical traditions. (One joyful noise may sound like another.) We are clearly in a time of desperate spiritual searching, and it is remarkable that so many people have found answers within the theater. In “Oh Happy Day!” Keyshawn can't figure out where he'll get the materials for the ark until he notices how easy it is to dismantle his father's house. In front of him lies wood for new construction; he just needs to demolish the old place and build something new. ♦
