The Atheist: Hood gives a star-making performance in Noone's one-man show

Single-character plays are always tricky business. If cast wrong, the entire show could spiral down into a boring tirade, turning even the most intriguing prose into the Encyclopedia Britannica. Despite these challenges, Hyde Park Theatre, with always-reliable director Ken Webster at the helm, decided to mount a production of Ronan Noone’s The Atheist, a tale of a new paper reporter’s  search for fame, who doesn’t care about who he steps on to get on top. Never before performed in this region, the play is shocking, intelligent, and darkly hilarious, and Hyde Park’s production brings out all the best parts of the play, with help from an absolutely wonderful performance from Joey Hood.

Throughout the play, the main character, Augustine Early, recounts for audiences  the abhorrent actions he took to try to get on top, and by the end of the play, these actions form a complex web so tight that you could have just as likely found it  in the middle of a crime novel, but the audience never has any trouble making sense of it all. This is largely due to the charismatic performance of Joey Hood, known to many audiences for his memorable performances in Killer Joe, The Collection and Bombs In Your Mouth, who takes a character we should vehemently hate , and turns him into some one understandable, even endearing. He doesn’t so much play the role of Early as embody him, with every word, gesture and grimace adding a new dimension to the complex character. From his first sentence, audience members are riveted to their chairs, and by play’s end, we may not truly like Augustine Early, but we certainly don't want him to leave the stage.

With this production, Joey Hood’s star power is rising to a massive level, and we can be sure to see amazing things in his future.  Though it may consist of only one character rattling off a complex narrative involving a half dozen different characters and enough twists to make Dan Brown blush, it still brings clever language and an interesting lead to keep the audience riveted to their seats. Hood and Webster have a hit on their hands, as the packed crowds and nightly standing ovations can tell you, but also raising audience expectation for their next work.

The Atheist is playing at Hyde Park Theater through March 13th. For more information, to purchase tickets, or to find out information about future productions, be sure to visit their website at hydeparktheatre.org.