REVIEW: POIGNANT, HOPEFUL DRAMA @ LUNA STAGE GIVES NEW MEANING TO MALE FRIENDSHIP AND PARENTING

By Ruth Ross

Despite growing up in the same Idaho small town, high school classmates, they’re an odd couple, Ryan and Keith, the protagonists in Samuel D. Hunter’s two-handed drama, A Case for the Existence of God, now playing at Luna Stage in West Orange.

Ryan is white; Keith is black. Ryan is divorced; Keith is gay. Ryan’s life certainly hasn’t panned out as expected: One of the most popular kids in school, he now holds a low-level job in a yogurt producing plant, his education ended at high school graduation, he’s never traveled out of the United States (let alone leaving his hometown); money talk stresses him out, although he believes that having it will give him “permission to exist”; he claims to have written a novella, yet he doesn’t know the meaning of harrowing and tacitly. He’s what we would call a loser.

In contrast, Keith’s upbringing includes international travel with a lawyer dad, a college degree in Early Music and English, an excitement at the discovery of a very early motet by an unknown composer, a sophisticated demeanor and vocabulary—none of which have guaranteed his success post college, for when we meet him, he’s working as a mortgage broker (not a lender, as he repeatedly tells Ryan) back in Twin Falls.

What does bring these two very different men together is their shared experience as the single parents of toddler girls: Ryan’s custody of Christa after a messy divorce and, after failed surrogacy and adoption, Keith’s fostering of Willa, the child of an addict, whom he hopes to adopt if no family member claims her by the age of two. Indeed, the two meet at their daughters’ daycare, after which Ryan approaches Keith to help him secure a loan to purchase a 12-acre plot of land once owned by his great-grandparents, a move he hopes will give him stability despite his uncertain financial situation. (Above: left, Matt Monaco and Chauncy Thomas)

Wary of each other at first—Ryan doesn’t remember bullying Keith in high school; Keith finds Ryan’s attempts to comfort him off-putting—these two young men find common ground and connection through the empathy they eventually feel for one another.

Director Ari Laura Kreith uses a sure hand to keep the plot—a series of meetings between the two in Keith’s office and later his porch—percolating along inexorably. And the two actors she has cast convincingly inhabit their roles to make us care about them, their futures, and their relationship with each other.

Matt Monaco’s Ryan is tightly wound, with feverish, glinting eyes that made me, at first, a bit afraid of him, especially given the fact that mental illness “runs in their family”: His mother was an addict, and his father threatened to kill himself in 6-year-old Ryan’s presence and later died when his son was nine. His yearning to prove his “success” by building a house on the very spot on which his ancestors’ house stood is palpable; that he loves his toddler daughter very much is never in doubt.

As Keith, Chauncy Thomas is urbane, sophisticated, learned. Yet, he is scared stiff that someone from his daughter Willa’s biological family will claim her before his two-year fostering results in adoption. With this sword metaphorically hanging over his head, Keith imagines the worst, running various heartbreaking scenarios by Ryan of how such an event could play out.

What’s especially interesting about the plot of A Case for the Existence of God, is that, while we are more familiar with such dialogue occurring between two single mothers regarding the hopes and fears of parenting, Hunter stands it on its head to give us the perspective of single dads in a similar predicament. Indeed, the scene on the playground where the two girls play is even more droll when it’s two men admonishing their children to share and taking photos of the girls holding hands! In plays featuring two moms, the dads are often absent and evil; this is a nice flip of the situation.

The story unfolds on Lauren Helpern’s street map of the real Twin Falls, Idaho, with white lines on a black background, although nothing is really black and white in this play, except for the two protagonists. Moved around by Monaco and Thomas, the furniture serves many purposes from office to porch. Deborah Caney’s costumes really telegraph the men’s different social classes with Ryan in a flannel shirt, blue jeans and work boots and Keith in khaki jeans with a blue cardigan sweater over a white shirt and a pair of polished tan leather shoes. Sarah Woods’ atmospheric lighting and Greg Scalera’s unobtrusive sound enhance the production.

Ultimately, A Case for the Existence of God is a play about empathy and hope, most evident in the penultimate scene where Keith collapses in Ryan’s arms when the worst has happened—a fitting conclusion to a poignant examination of male friendship, bonding, and parenting. About halfway through the pay, Ryan tells Keith that they “share a special sadness,” to which Keith bristles, but that is the tie that binds these two young men. That they find and express this sentiment gives hope that, despite evolving slowly, empathy between very different people can be won and cherished.

Oh, and about that title. While it might not be evident until the final scene, trust me: The payoff is surprising, yet satisfying. There is a God.

A Case for the Existence of God will be performed at Luna Stage, 555 Valley Road, West Orange, through March 16. For information and tickets, visit www.lunastage.org online, or call the box office at (973) 395-5551.

Photos by Valerie Terranova