Grace

Playwright Craig Wright made his Broadway debut last year with his 2004 drama, Grace. The play starred Paul Rudd and Ed Asner (who played a grumpy exterminator). There are a few other characters, too, all of whom live in Florida.

The play may be small-scale, containing only a handful of characters and a single set, but it tackles issues as big as religion and one’s belief in oneself. It provides the kind of food for thought for which Next Act Theater is known.

The play opens with its final scene, making the rest of the play a flashback. Some characters are dead, one seems about to commit suicide, and another is frightened out of her wits. What could draw these seemingly normal people to such extremes?

One certainly can’t tell from the early scenes, in which the vacuous Steve (played here by an energized Rick Pendzich) announces to his young wife, Sara, that a miracle has occurred. These native Minnesotans have recently come to Florida as part of their “faith journey.” Suddenly, Steve discovers a mysterious foreign investor who entrusts Steve with purchasing and remodeling some hotels.

The devoutly religious couple celebrates this news not with champagne, but with prayer. In the background is heard soft, contemporary Christian music. The couple, who have arrived without a dime, are eager to get the projects going. However, neither Sara nor Sam, an upstairs neighbor, are as nearly euphoric as Steve. They question Steve’s methods for linking up with this investor. “It sounds too good to be true,” Sam says, prophetically. Nonetheless, Steve is fully convinced of his unseen investor’s intentions.

Playwright Craig Wright makes Steve such an unsympathetic character that we don’t even care when his good fortune turns out to be a scam. Steve is extremely pushy about quizzing those around him about their religious beliefs – even Karl, the bug exterminator who sprays their apartment.

To keep the audience interested, the play sometimes moves backward and forward in time, although the reason for this isn’t immediately apparent. Far more sympathetic than Steve are Sara (deftly played by Libby Amato) and their neighbor, Sam (Jonathan Wainwright). The chemistry between Sara and Sam foreshadows the ending we’ve already seen at the beginning of the play. Wainwright is completely convincing as a NASA engineer who is recovering from a horrific car wreck that killed his fiancé. His hesitancy – in trusting his neighbors and even in his physical movements – is spot on. He and Sara come together gently, as two kindred souls joining.

Although the play is far from being a comedy, a number of laugh lines lighten the mood. When Karl, the seen-it-all exterminator, notices that Steve is holding a pistol, he simply says, “Welcome to Florida.” Such deadpan delivery is so easily tossed off by veteran actor John Kishline that one wishes his role was more prominent.

Ironically, the play ends with the non-believer confirming that there’s “something” more going on in the world than pure fate. Sara finds faith in herself, not in her marriage or, perhaps, even her church. Steve is so shattered by his would-be partners’ deception that he wonders at God’s motives. How can this happen, he muses, when everything he does is “right?”

While Wright’s play is solely concerned with religious beliefs, its ideas could easily be transferred to other situations in which “true believers” lose faith in their cause. Terrorism or job terminations are two likely scenarios that come to mind. At Next Act, Grace is filled with fine performances and enough clever dialogue to keep audiences riveted throughout.