ACT's `Whore,' Aurora's `Busy World' take theater to church

June 20, 2:48 PMSF Theater ExaminerChad Jones

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If you think summer theater in the Bay Area means fun and frivolity, think again. Some serious stuff is going down on local stages, and I’m here to tell you it’s all about gays, God and gore.

John Ford’s 1630 potboiler “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore,” now at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, isn’t technically a Jacobean revenge drama, but it comes out of that bloody, sensational school. ACT artistic director Carey Perloff delivers a sturdy production of the play, which involves a forbidden romance between a brother (Michael Hayden) and a sister (Rene Augesen), lots of murders, abundant mistreatment of women (perhaps you noticed the title) and all kinds of assorted mayhem.

What makes the play worth seeing is the live music provided by punk cellist/vocalist Bonfire Madigan Shive, a fascinating performer who connects to the play more viscerally than the actors.

It’s difficult to discern the point of Ford’s drama. Is it a warning not to knock up your own sister? By the end (I won’t give anything away but it sure ain’t happy), it seems all Ford really wants to do is flip off the Catholic church. The Pope’s representative, dressed in blood red robes and played by Jack Willis, is corrupt and horrible. He gives safe haven to a murderer and he can’t wait to tidy up all the murder-inspired loose ends by claiming all the dead people’s property for the church.

Though the production is admirable, the whole thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
A much more thoughtful exploration of faith can be found at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company in the form of Keith Bunin’s “The Busy World Is Hushed,” a drama that welcomes – encourages even – discussion of God and the godless.

By wrapping his story in a conventional romance (albeit between two men) and a tale of family dysfunction (mental illness, suicide, missing father), Bunin and director Robin Stanton are able to go fairly deep into the personal waters of faith and belief.

What looks on the surface like a movie of the week is actually much more potent. Hannah, a woman of faith (Anne Darragh), is researching a book about a recently discovered gospel that could be the closest thing to the actual words of Jesus. Helping her with the book is a ghostwriter (Chad Deverman), who falls in love with Hannah's wayward son (James Wagner).

This triad of the faithful (the mother), the faithless (the son) and the wavering (the holy ghost writer) allows for discussions about God and history and the warp of organized religion that are both civil and angry. Mother and son are especially cruel to one another as they find that by removing God from their relationship, they have nothing left to talk about.

Grief and loneliness also weigh heavily in Bunin’s script, so do issues of finding comfort and home. There are no conclusions drawn, and soap boxes are neatly sidestepped in favor of more human vacillation between doubt and faith and back again.

While ACT’s “Whore” makes you glad you missed the 17th century, Aurora’s “Busy World” inspires discussion of God’s place in a modern world that is anything but hushed.