This one's tough. Keith Bunin's play is dense with ideas and semantics, and sometimes is downright preachy as it tries to bring large issues down to personal size. It's challenging, even if it doesn't work all the time.
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Playwright: Keith Bunin. At: Next Theatre Company, 927 Noyes, Evanston. Phone: 847-475-1875; $23-$38. Runs through: Oct. 14
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Perhaps preachy is OK, given that antagonist Hannah, an Episcopalian priest and seminary professor whose specialty is the early gospels. ( There are more gospels than just the New Testament's Fab Four. ) She hires late-twentysomething Brandt to ghost-write her new book, and when he reveals he's gay, she engineers a romance with her gay son; a damaged, too-bright and doubting young man named Thomas, who's a part-time carpenter ( after missing many opportunities ) . Yeah, the Christian iconography is thick.
Thomas, the play's hero, is difficult to like even as portrayed by easy-on-the-eyes Erik Hellman. An uncompromising son of a bitch, Thomas is similar to Vivie Warren, the hero of Bernard Shaw's 1890s play Mrs. Warren's Profession. Raised and well-educated in Victorian Middle Class luxury, Vivie coolly rejects her mother when she discovers Mrs. Warren is a one-time prostitute who gained wealth as co-owner of high-class whore houses. Self-righteous Vivie forgives her mother's prostitution—something brought about by socio-economic desperation—but condemns her mother's exploitive capitalism, and Vivie has no desire for sentimental mother-daughter bonding.
Thomas is similarly cruelly unsentimental. He believes his mother's faith is prostitution, an act consciously performed to earn a church living but which she cannot possibly believe. He persistently challenges her to be truthful, to acknowledge her hypocrisy. When Thomas discovers that his mother authorized his love affair with Brandt, he invokes his cut-throat integrity to humiliate them both before walking out for good. Thomas knows what he hates but not what he loves.
There are other things as well: Thomas pursues knowledge of his long-dead father, a minister who died young, perhaps of suicide; and Brandt's unseen father is dying of cancer. It's a bit too much for clarity despite the consistently lively intelligence of the work. I don't understand if Bunin's primary concerns are Christian issues ( or questions of faith broadly speaking ) or issues of family relationships, loyalties and affection. The Busy World is Hushed is not a confrontation between religion and sexuality, which is refreshing. Hannah is an accepting liberal cleric concerned about Thomas' health, promiscuity and need for a true life course.
Directed by Kimberly Senior, veteran Peggy Roeder is rock-solid as Hannah, dashing off the sometimes-didactic language with aplomb. Tall, lithe Dennis Grimes as Brandt is less successful in Act I, tending to repetitive intonation patterns. Given a wider emotional range in Act II, he's much better. Hellman plays Thomas with an effective unattractive sharp edge, yet remains sexy. Jack Magaw's book-piled, stain-glassed set bespeaks a properly neo-Gothic seminary.
FYI: The play's title is from a beautiful Episcopalian prayer.