Bill Cain’s brazenly autobiographical play takes a wry but clear-eyed view of what the modern clergy can and cannot accomplish. Cain says, through his protagonist also named Bill (the genial, bemused Ray Ficca), that a holy person proceeds mainly by calling attention to details. In this way, by being an indicator (as many depictions of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, show her), he resembles the modern playwright (and Cain is both playwright and Jesuit priest).
The details to which Cain points are simple but strong: the decline and death of his own mother Mary (the flexible Marybeth Wise), the life in flashbacks of his late father Pete (Mitchell Hébert, always a pleasure to watch), and the life journey of his brother Paul (Danny Gavigan). With many short scenes (some no more than a line or two long) and much direct address to the audience, the play clicks along. Hébert and Gavigan fill in minor characters of friends, neighbors, and health care professionals, and Gavigan is at his most watchable as a comically callow physician.
Nevertheless, the side trip to explore Paul’s military career in Vietnam, cut short by a crisis of faith in the rightness of our conduct there, serves to diffuse the focus of the play. Cain deals more effectively with the U.S.’s misadventures in Southeast Asia in his 9 Circles, recently produced by a Round House partner theater.
- How to Write a New Book for the Bible, by Bill Cain, directed by Ryan Rilette, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Md.
This is the first Round House show directed by new Producing Artistic Director Ryan Rilette, who brings new life to the company’s repertory after its ill-advised overemphasis on dramatized novels. Next year’s season includes works by Martin McDonagh, August Wilson, and area premieres of plays by Theresa Rebeck, Melissa James Gibson, and Nicky Silver.