Playwright: Eric Pfeffinger
At: Voices And Visions Theatre at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave.
Phone: (773) 506-4542; $15
Runs through: Dec. 21
----------------------------------------
The Rapture, according to certain apocalypticist Christian sects, is to the Last Judgment as the sentencing is to the verdict, being the act by which the faithful are separated from the disbelievers, the former then entering paradise where they are to dwell for all eternity. It is also the catalyst in Eric Pfeffinger's play, his thesis for which encompasses several daring proposals—in our modern culture, anyway—among them 1) that religious converts are often more zealously intolerant than those raised in piety, 2) that atheists can be even more bigoted than the fundamentalists they deride, and 3) that, in this as in all things, inflexibility and prejudice results in a diminished life.
Pfeffinger frames his arguments in a Big Chill-style reunion of college chums (University of Chicago, significantly). Over the 15 years since that youthful fellowship, Amy and Paul have pursued academic careers, taking time out to marry and have a child, the 13-year-old Greta. Richard has abandoned his law practice to open a bookstore/café following his marriage to the devout Kim, now expecting a baby, the shower for whom is the occasion bringing them together again.
Self-imposed censorship of youthful reminiscences—specifically, of the cheerfully profane Lydia, whom Richard spurned after his rebaptism—makes for tensions until the morning that they awake to learn that Armageddon has arrived in the night and that they are still gathered together. This phenomenon refutes preconceived notions on all fronts. It requires a child and a sinner to deliver them from the intellectual and spiritual confusion engendered by unexpected enlightenment.
The social ban on discussion of Politics and Religion is enforced more rigidly today perhaps than at any other time in history, the latter topic's appearance in dramatic contexts usually confined to enigmatically euphoric allegories or smugly secular satires.
Under Rick DesRochers' smart direction, however, the actors selected for this Voices and Visions Theatre production never strain plausibility in their depiction of characters easily reduced to comic-book stereotypes. And if Pfeffinger wraps up his symposium a little too mystically, his largely successful efforts to coherently map the speculative regions of theological Myth render his small indulgence forgivable.
