Playwright: Lee Barats. At: Annoyance Theatre, 4830 N. Broadway St. Tickets: 773-561-4665 or www.annoyanceproductions.com; $10. Runs through: Jan. 6
When a comedy show has a title like God is Gay and Wants You to Be Gay, Too: Proof From The Bible, there's the hope that it will be able to incisively skewer Biblical gay bashing and religion-based "ex-gay" reparative therapy.
Alas, there isn't a strong enough comic and campy drive to power this Annoyance Theatre show in its present state. Instead of feeling like a confident and fully polished product, the whole enterprise comes off like a rough draft.
God is Gay is the brainchild of Lee Barats, who also stars in the show as Reverend Blake Halford. Barats structures the show like a sermon, where an ex-hetero Rev. Halford uses a PowerPoint presentation along with demonstrations (some involving audience participation) to drive home his reading of the Bible where God is welcoming to homosexuality and actually against heterosexuality.
There are plenty of opportunities for subversive humor here, but Barats often doesn't go as far as you might hope (save for his reading of the commandment coveting your neighbor's wife and slaves). Barats may spoof the typical Christian service format, but he needs to inject more exaggerated camp into the proceedings to take the humor up several notches.
Barats' God is Gay costars are underutilized with either weak lines or limited stage time. A potential major source of humor could have come Rev. Halford's also ex-hetero husband, Rikki (Peter Kim). But Kim isn't given much to work with in terms of comic dialogue, and director Jim Jeffries steered him toward understated line readings that seemed to sap some energy from the show. There might have been better comic potential for Rikki if he mimicked the often worshipful and self-superior attitudes displayed by many a religious leader's doting spouse (and even more humor if details about their sex life slipped out at inopportune moments).
Chris Kervick as the assistant Christo does inject some stereotypically sassy gay humor, particularly when called upon to take part in the audience-inspired improvisation scenes. But Kervick's effeminate Christo doesn't get utilized as much as he should.
Part of the reason why there might have been a dearth of laughs could be blamed on the sparse opening-night audience. But at every turn, the show's writing doesn't live up to the comic potential of the premise.
With two major lawsuits tied to reparative therapy from California and North Carolina currently winding their way through the U.S. court system, God is Gay could have been much more sharper and topical with its approach. Perhaps with more tinkering and recasting, God is Gay could be much more persuasively funny and find more willing converts.