When I saw the poster advertising the Signature Theater production of Samuel D. Hunter’s latest work, I joked to a friend, “This will be about lonely people in Idaho being miserable.” After having seen the show in question, A Case for the Existence of God, which has won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the 2021-22 season, I realize it was an unfair generalization of a gifted author’s oeuvre. Sort like saying all Tennessee Williams’s plays are about alcoholic neurotics clinging to dreams of a decaying Southland. Case does bear a resemblance to Hunter’s previous works such as Greater Clements, The Whale, Pocatello, and A Bright New Boise. Yes, it does take place in Idaho, there is a conflict over ancestral land, and its two characters are both sad and lonely, but this devastating two-hander has a power all its own.
The opening could not be more mundane, yet the plot soon gains momentum with the velocity of a modern Greek tragedy. We are in a tiny office cubicle isolated in the middle of a starkly blank space (Arnulfo Maldonado created the eloquently simple setting.) Ryan (Will Brill), a desperate single dad still recovering from his painful divorce, has come to Keith (Kyle Beltran), a mortgage broker with troubles of his own. Ryan, a shift worker at a yogurt plant, wants to buy twelve acres of land that originally belonged to his family before mental illness and arson caused them to lose it. Keith, who holds degrees in Early Music and English and is now chained to a desk, wants to help because they both have toddler daughters in precarious situations. Ryan’s ex-wife is angling for custody, while gay and single Keith is in the process of adopting a foster baby who could be taken from him by the child’s biological aunt.
This common element of potential sorrow connects the two disparate men. Ryan is white, undereducated, and scrambling to make a living. Keith is black, gay, and from a privileged background. As their friendship grows, they face the horror of a chaotic, dangerous world and a seemingly indifferent deity, though God is never directly mentioned. Ryan pleads that there must be good in the world, but Keith is more cynical. The intense, 90-minute play finishes on an ambiguous note and will leave you shattered.
Seamlessly directed by David Cromer and compassionately written by Hunter, the trajectory of the two men’s relationship plays like one long conversation with subtle changes in locale and time marked by Tyler Micoleau’s beautifully subtle lighting. Brill and Beltran brilliantly depict the pain and frustration of their characters as well as the fear and anxiety bubbling just below the surface. They also convey the guarded optimism peaking beneath the gloom in the bittersweet ending of this magnificent play.
