Since it premiered in 1999 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, David Rambo's God's Man in Texas has been seen and lauded at seven -- now eight -- other theaters. And 14 more productions are scheduled around the country for this compelling work. Warren Hammack, artistic/producing director at Kentucky's Horse Cave Theater (celebrating its 25th anniversary this year) was acclaimed for his role in the three-man play -- where all three parts are strong ones -- last winter at the Hippodrome State Theaters in Gainesville, Florida.
Repeating the role at Horse Cave, Hammack delivers a searing performance as the canny, controlling, longtime pastor of one of those cradle-to-grave megachurches that he built on the strength of his personality and ambition with behind-the-scenes aid from his equally powerful wife. It takes away nothing from Hammack's achievement to say that both Robert F. Brock as Dr. Jeremiah (Jerry) Mears, the rising young contender to succeed Hammack's 81-year-old Dr. Philip Gottschall, and Henry Haggard as Hugo Taney, the church's "born again" video technician who worships the old minister for turning him away from a life of drugs, alcohol and hopelessness, match Hammack's virtuosity and make the play a tour de force for all three. Hugo's doglike devotion to the church has made him the eyes and ears of the Gottschalls (he faithfully reports everything he hears to Mrs. G.) from the congregation, the staff, and the numerous activities (he is enrolled, he says, in every support group) carried on by The Rock, as Houston's Rock Baptist Church is known.
It's the Baptist Super Bowl with its restaurants, coffee shop, three snack bars, four cafeterias, a dinner theater, bowling alley, eight-screen cineplex, Chrisitan satellite network, gymnasium, two swimming pools, baby care, day care, counseling center, kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school, college, gift shop, bookstore, music store, football stadium, summer camp, singles ministry, full orchestra, two marching bands, parking for 10,000 cars, and the world's biggest Christmas electric light parade.
Playwright Rambo, while displaying in all its overkill the workings of the mammoth institution and the people -- at various times humorous, contentious, self-serving, noble, reverential, combative, penitent, arrogant -- who make it function, never lets an anti- or pro-religion bias turn the play into a polemic. Both ministers make it clear they are rock-bottom fundamentalists. They see nothing wrong (until circumstances change later for one of them) in the church's materialism or its business-model emphasis on money (contributions) and numbers (membership and attendance at three giant services each Sunday). And if Gottschall is a King Lear figure in reverse, doing whatever it takes to hold on to his throne, why should we think humans running churches are any different from humans running anything else?
Rambo's powerful and thought provoking play comes fully to life under Liz Bussey Fentress' astute direction. As in the best kind of theater, there is much to ponder here.
