One would expect a brief play about Ted
Haggard, the evangelical preacher who was caught messing around
with male prostitutes to be hilarious, nasty fun, and Michael
Yates Crowley’s Ted Haggard Monologues certainly is, but it’s
also more. Crowley plays a variety of characters, from Haggard
himself to his put upon, soft-spoken, bitterly pious wife to his
sons to one of his son’s Sexually frustrated fiancée (pronounced
"fiancé" by the somewhat miseducated Haggard boys) to Rick, the
prostitute Haggard used and abandoned.
Crowley not only manages to capture the
characters in all their overheated delusions -- the affianced
son imagines his God as one with sinners stuck in His teeth and
His eyes pouring wrathful fire, and Haggard swears his
association with homosexuals was a show of Extreme Mercy towards
them-- but he also infuses the performances with an unlooked for
empathy and compassion. He manages to do this even as he allows
his New York audience to laugh at his characters.
There really are folks like that "out
there," the play reminds us, and one should take them seriously
for no other reason that they might help elect the next
President -- they certainly helped elect the last one. And the
question of God’s engagement with humanity, of the urge both to
give in to one’s nastier impulses or practice restraint, whether
imposed by yourself or your society, is perennial in all
cultures.
Crowley is joined onstage by a chorus made
up of Christina Aranda, Betsey Boutelle, Naomi Ekperigin, Andy
Lindberg and Alkis Sarantinos. Dressed in costume designer Cody
Upton’s church robes, they sing bits of Christian music between
the monologues with heavenly sweetness.
The play also benefits from Michael Rau’s
crisp direction, and Greg Malen’s sometimes subdued lighting
design. It runs about an hour, without intermission. The
reviewer suggests that you get there early -- as she didn’t --
or you might have to stand up in the aisles -- as she did -- to
watch this captivating work. It’s presented by the
Collective: Unconscious, at 279 Church
Street.
