BWW Reviews: HOW TO WRITE A NEW BOOK FOR THE BIBLE is Superb! Now through Nov. 20th

I suspect that Bill Cain, Jesuit priest and playwright of How to Write a New Book for the Bible, kept a diary during his mother's last six months of life possibly to distance himself by inhabiting the writer's perspective or perhaps as a coping mechanism after he moved back home to care for her. Either way, his new play, now enjoying a successful run at Berkeley Repertory Theater, is a testament to the parents he loved and the brother he looked up to. Sublimely articulated, crafted with infinite honesty, love and humor, How to Write a New Book for the Bible lifts up this ordinary family and makes sacred the story of their lives.

The intimate, and very often humorous, autobiographical work is narrated by Tyler Pierce as Bill Cain (he uses his and his family's real names in the show). Pierce strikes just the right balance between humor, frustration and sadness and he is wonderful in this role. He moves adroitly between narrator duties and his character's many moods and thoughts. We learn that he is a writer but he doesn't reveal that he is a priest at first. Instead, Bill tells us that first rule of writing is to write what you know. And what Bill knows is that soon he has to tell his mother that she will be dead in six months.

Besides keeping a diary he prepares his mother's meds and takes her to the doctor. On one visit to Dr. Polycarp (a sly nod to the 2nd century Bishop who was credited with compiling and editing the books of the New Testament), the specialist is surprised that her replacement pig valve has lasted twenty years. "Well, Dr. Polycarp, this was an exceptional pig," she tells him most emphatically.

Billy, as his mother calls him, also care for her and the apartment. And what else is a good son to do with all of his time while he waits for his mother to die? He reminisces - backward and forward through his life, skipping around, remembering long-forgotten feelings brought into sharp relief by the act of coming home and vividly recalling family stories filled with humor and pathos, anger and love. Play, rewind, fast-forward, pause...play.

The focus of his attention is, of course, Mary, his sweet, stubborn mother, played with glorious delight and aching poignancy by Linda Gehringer. Gehringer seems made for this role, so thoroughly does she inhabit the character. Mary of the sensible shoes and slippers and softly pinstriped robe, latticed with meandering rose buds, was once hard-working and stalwart, and Gehringer does a fabulous job giving us glimpses into this strong woman made weak by illness and old age. As her character glides back and forth from younger days to the present she morphs into her younger self and then back again with consummate grace and believability.

Bill's father, Pete (Leo Marks) makes appearances in flashback and as a kindly, in-the-flesh spirit to his beloved wife, Mary. Marks takes on many roles (including a doctor and a female nurse) and he is superb in all of them. But it is as Pete, the ever-optimistic and loving father, that he shines most brightly. He's much younger than Gehringer but plays the part of an older man most convincingly, his body language and facial expressions completely belying his age.

Bill's older brother Paul (the equally superb Aaron Blakely) hovers just outside the family drama coming in only when an emergency seems to arise and when his mother is close to dying. We learn that his parents expected a lot from their offspring and perhaps this is why Paul stays away.

"My brother and I were ruined by the book 'The Little Engine that Could,'" says Bill with wry humor. "They thought that Paul could do anything and when he couldn't they thought he just wasn't trying." Paul ends up joining the army and going to Vietnam where he writes to his parents every week without fail, except one.

It is in this moment that husband and wife lean on each other and their God, not knowing if their son is dead or alive. "Our Father, who art in heaven," Pete intones, while Mary whispers the prayer, "Hail Mary, full of grace...," their voices mingling in melodic point and counterpoint almost like a song. Their son will live but the mystery of the missing week will later lead to a visit to the Vietnam War memorial by the two brothers that is moving and heartfelt.

Bill finally dons his priestly robes only to tell us that, as a writer, the Bible embarrasses him. "Have you ever read the apocalypse," he asks, proving his point in one sentence. He is also frustrated that people keep trying to turn the Bible into a rule book, yet it is the rules that his family lives by, and his own rules as a writer, that inform and give his life cohesiveness.

"We had a functional family," he says. "We had rules." The main one was that no one could leave before a fight was over. In one fight, when Mary feels her husband isn't working hard enough, he smiles and says to her, "You have to have some faith - and not in God. That's easy, he's perfect. You have to believe in me." They had a beautiful love despite, or perhaps because of, all the ups and downs that they weathered together.

Scott Bradley's scenic design and Alexander V. Nichols' inventive lighting do much to ground the play. A door, together with a sturdy wooden chair and a lace curtained window are joined by and a chest that becomes the doctor's office table, a medicine cabinet, a dresser and even a bed. The effect is minimalist and spare be absolutely effective. Nichols' suspended lamps, bare bulbs, hospital and ceiling lamps, as well as two chandeliers, make their way down as they are needed, as if to say that light (and holiness) can come from many sources - even from a play about an ordinary family. The effect is dazzling.

The last part of the play is a beautiful rendition of the Catholic Stations of the Cross, which depict Jesus's final hours on earth. But instead of Jesus it is Mary Cain's final days that are narrated and dramatized with such loving sensitivity. The words of the Latin cannon "Dona Nobis Pacem" (Grant us peace) punctuate each station as, step by step, mother and son prepare to face her death.

Her passing, and the months and years of family life leading up to that moment, are rendered sacred by the words of her son. How to Write a New Book for the Bible is, in the end, the story of all our lives if we choose to see it that way. And it is the job of playwright and priest alike to express that point and say, as Bill Cain says about his family, "Look, look there. Look at that thing set apart. Notice it. God cares about that. That's holy."

How to Write a New Book for the Bible
World premiere
Written by Bill Cain
Directed by Kent Nicholson
October 7-November 20, 2011
Running time: 2 hours and 20 minutes,
Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com

 

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