Review: A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD at Katonah Classic Stage

A Case for the Existence of God. That’s quite a weighty title for a compact, one-act two-hander that runs a swift and thoroughly engrossing 90 minutes. The Katonah Classic Stage production of Samuel D. Hunter’s award-winning play runs through Sunday, Nov. 3, at Whippoorwill Hall in North Castle Library in Armonk, N.Y. (katonahclassicstage.com). It was named Best Play of 2022 by the New York Drama Critics Circle. 

The title can be seen as both cryptic and arguably invested with a dual meaning. 

The more adverse meaning might be that a higher power – or merely the randomness of the universe – tests our mettle to overcome life’s myriad obstacles. Conversely, the title’s aspirational meaning might be that, those obstacles notwithstanding, through fortitude, we’ll manage to find a form of salvation, if not in our lifetime, then vicariously through our descendants. 

Setting his story in Twin Falls, Idaho – the kind of wide-open land that identifies as God’s country –  Mr. Hunter presents his case through two thirtysomething vessels: Ryan, a white laborer outfitted in flannel shirt, work boots, jeans, and a salt-of-the-earth aura, needs a loan to buy a piece of property on which to build his dream home. Keith, a gay person of color clothed preppy-style in buttoned-down shirt, v-neck sweater, chinos and tan oxfords, is a mortgage broker that Ryan is meeting with to secure the loan.The contrast in their optics is an apt reflection of the contrasts that run through the narrative, along with coincidences that bind them together as single parents. 

The set could not be more mundane: A characterless office cubicle (which ultimately yields to a naked stage). The message could not be more existential: Life is hard, and then you die. Is that all there is to it? The most pragmatic way to answer that might be, “God only knows.“

Everything about A Case for the Existence of God is stripped to the essentials, the better to tap into its raw emotion that impels the audience to lean forward for its full length. 

As Katonah Classic Stage Executive Director Sharon Kearney writes in the Playbill, this piece “Delves into the significance of human connection and empathy, more important than ever in our increasingly divided world. It encourages us to confront our differences while recognizing our shared humanity... we all share the fundamental quest for meaning and understanding.” 

The author explores the viccissitudes of living through harrowing circumstances that throw our equilibrium off kilter. He offers a specific close-up of the one thing we all share in common: the lifelong tragi-comedy known as the human condition. Throughout the story, Mr. Hunter peels away layers with surgical precision to reveal what drives these two, and what scares them. 

Take, for one example, the mind-numbing lingua franca of home loans and mortgages that is beyond the ken of laborer Ryan, whose jobs include a yogurt factory and McDonald’s. He knows what he wants and will leave it to others – like the officious and caring Keith – to figure out how to get it for him. “Money stuff makes me nervous,” admits Ryan, who adds, with ambivalence, that money also gives him permission to be alive. There also are the machinations and nightmares that Keith must endure as he tries to turn his foster child into his fully-adopted daughter.  

Keith (James A. Pierce III) and Ryan (Tim Walker Anderson) are two eminently decent people. What you see is what you get. Their contrasting personalities and backgrounds – Ryan’s parents were druggies, Keith’s father is a lawyer – recede in the face of coincidences that forge a bond between the two men.

Keith recalls being a high school classmate of Ryan’s and being bullied by kids like him. Ryan’s reaction is instructive: He makes a case for redemption by, all these years later, allowing himself to regret his brutish behavior as a teenager. “I convinced myself for a really long time that I could just, like, force myself to be the person that I wanted to be.” 

For his part, Keith speaks to the irrelevance of a liberal arts education by wryly noting how his dual degree in Early Music and English has landed him in a low-level job in the town where he grew up. 

What invites each of them into the other’s fraught existence is their shared sadness brought on by the challenges of being single fathers. For Keith and Ryan both, life is lived on the precipice, with FOMO (fear of missing out) of life’s joys and triumphs forever dangling above their heads like the sword of Damacles.

Through the metaphor of life embodied by Keith and Ryan, Samuel Hunter is expressing the belief we not only need to be held accountable for our choices in life, but we need to be held in the warmth of each other’s mutual compassion.

In its elegant simplicity, Katonah Classic Stage’s presentation of A Case for the Existence of God, under the fine-tuned direction of Trent Dawson, draws out all the nuances and grace notes of two people who share a self-pity and a romanticized notion of how things should be. There is poetry in the simplicity and directness of their conversations. There is gentle humor too, the kind of comic relief we resort to in dire times for the sheer sake of sanity.

Mr. Dawson’s staging is highly effective in its simplicity and pacing, holding the audience in thrall throughout. That, of course, also is a testament to the two very fine actors he’s cast. 

As Ryan, Tim Walker Anderson manages to interweave casualness with anxiety. His portrayal’s authenticity makes the words that issue from his mouth sound like they purely are his, not written by someone else. The effect of that affect, from the opening scene to the last, is mesmerizing.

James A. Pierce’s Keith projects a caring and nurturing nature while hinting at a world of hurt that has bedeviled his life. His studied calmness makes moments when he is crestfallen or enraged all the more poignant. 

There are many messages in A Case for the Existence of God worth absorbing and worthy of heeding in our own lives. Change is constant is one of them. Whether that’s good or bad, in the end, is up to each of us.

Speaking of the end, the play’s final scene has the air of mysticism, optically signaled by light wisps of smoke wafting on stage, with both actors standing at the foot of the stage, looking into the distance, after having remained seated for most of the play. The dialogue turns a tad tricky, and that’s all you’ll get from me about that. You’ll have to see it for yourself, and I encourage you to do just that.

Whatever one makes of the ending, one thing’s almost certain: Audience members will leave the theater eager to discus it with each other. 

In addition to Trent Dawson as Director and Stage Designer, Costume Design is by Caty Koehl, Sound Design by John Gromada, Lighting Design is by
Riley Cavanaugh. Elizabeth Ramsay is Stage Manager and
Heather Sandler iis Assistant Stage Manager. 

 

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