Audio By Carbonatix
For all of us Book of Mormon-praising, godless lefties in the American theater press, it’s all too easy to paint all Christians with the same derisive brush. But there are plenty of derisive brushes to go around, one for each sect. Playwright Evan Wood colors two of them, Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity, in his uproarious comedy The Savannah Disputation, which opens Friday courtesy of Miami’s Zoetic Stage at the Adrienne Arsht Center (1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami). It depicts a holy war on a microcosmic scale, as two Roman Catholic sisters “of a certain age” are visited by their new Evangelical neighbor, a perky young blonde with designs on saving these heathens lest they roast in Hell for eternity. The old ladies soon summon their local priest for a theological steel-cage match.
“People wouldn’t expect me to do a play like this,” says director Stuart Meltzer, who is Jewish and not dogmatic. “But when I read it, I was laughing my ass off. This goes well beyond religion. It goes to the structure of what it means to be an American.”
April 11-28, 2013
