SOME THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS: A FINAL EVENING WITH THE ILLUMINATI
Why is it? “When we’re talking to God, we’re praying. When God talks to us, we’re schizophrenic.”
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The setting is a bombed-out church in some not-so-distant nightmare future. Pat Robertson is president, Richard Nixon is vice president (a combination that sounds less strange when you recall the stories of Nixon in his final days, leading spontaneous prayer sessions in the Oval Office). The world is recovering from some holocaust; parishioners are dropping like flies from the residue of nerve gas. In this church of the poison mind, a lone keeper of the flame presides: Reverend Eddie, a pill-popping, paranoid power-tripper closing in on his final basketball game with Death. An old man in faded-red long johns and mismatched orange socks, crazy Eddie is tormented by whispering voices in his head–voices he identifies as the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret Masonic society of religious rebels who preached anticlericalism and the perfectibility of mankind. Eddie is also none too fond of “sneaking Jesuits” or gays; on the other hand, in the basketball game of life, he says, “It helps if you have a lot of black people on your side.”
Eddie alternates between writing sermons, hectoring the congregation on the need for a new pulpit and bigger donations, and instructing his sole remaining acolyte, Brother Lawrence, in the ways of his “one true church”–a hodgepodge of medieval arcana, Bible-thumping Protestant fundamentalism, postholocaust reality (the Virgin Mary wears a gas mask), and Reaganish sports anecdotes. (The altar-blessing ceremony closely resembles a football scrimmage; later, Eddie ritually reenacts Christ’s procession through Jerusalem to Golgotha carrying a gigantic basketball hoop instead of a cross.)
Illuminati is first and foremost burlesque–performed with screwball-comedy energy and precision under the sure directorial hand of Rebecca Wackler, who with Larson and Lee is a partner in the Atlanta-based Southern Theatre Conspiracy troupe. But the play is guided by a singular vision that embraces, instead of denigrating, the spiritual urges of humankind. There is as much passion as parody here; Illuminati is a genuinely visionary work of theater.
Best of all is the cast, under the guidance of director Stephen B. Scott and musical director Sticco. Most of these actors also appeared in two previous Scott-Sticco shows, Nightingale and The Future of the American Musical Theatre. They have developed into an absolutely first-rate ensemble. The singing is glorious–not only the individual voices but the blend and dynamic control are splendid, and the actors know how to keep their performances consistent as they move between musical and nonmusical passages. A company like this is a treasure; A Change in the Heir is a must-see for anyone who cares about quality musical theater.
