Here’s a perversely lovable and compact little theater package to know about, as re-streamed by the Barrington Stage Company. Rob Ulin’s Judgment Day is billed as a virtual reading, but it easily passes for a full production of the sort regularly Zoomed during the Covid crisis.
As immediate come-on, the whippersnapper of a dark comedy boasts a Broadway-level cast, including Jason Alexander, Patti LuPone, Santino Fontana, Michael McKean, Loretta Devine, Elizabeth Stanley, and Michael Mastro.
You really can’t go wrong, although in Judgment Day Samuel Campo (Alexander) cunningly tries to do go as wrong as he can from the get-go. He’s a lawyer who regards the law as something to get around. He’s been doing that with unmitigated delight right up to the moment he suffers a massive heart attack and is so close to death, he find himself in conversation with an angel.
She’s a former teacher of his, Sister Margaret (LuPone, in tight nun’s wimple), now in heaven and happy to inform lawyer Campo that he’s on his way to hell. Trying to get around the damning verdict as he’s gotten around so many others during his corrupt life, Sam coaxes raucously laughing Margaret to explain that his doing good deeds will exculpate his sins. There’s even a nifty catch. He doesn’t have to believe in the good deeds he pulls off. He has only to do them. He can blithely disregard the malice he exerts in pursuit of them.
Campo is off to the races and to the bad-conduct erasures. Accomplishing his goal, he enlists the help of Father Michael (Fontana), a priest who regularly confesses his own sins to Monsignor (McKean). Father Michael is quickly suspicious of Sam’s motives and procedures. At the same time he’s intrigued by them.
Campo focuses his “good” deeds in two directions. One concerns wife Tracy (Justina Machado), whom he abandoned with not so much as a fare-thee-well ten years before and now discovers is raising Caspar (Julian Emile Lerner), a recalcitrant nine-year-old. That’s to say, the hellion Caspar is the son he never knew he had. Sam’s other concern is Edna (Carol Mansell), an aging widow who has been late with a final insurance payment and is threatened by insurance agent Jackson (Mastro) with cancellation of her plan and loss of her home.
How Campo goes about achieving his ends remains as devious as ever. Moreover, Sam’s eventually acquiring the conscience he never wanted—he saw that as ruining all his unceasingly devious fun—isn’t in much doubt. It’s the arriving there where Ulin has his own barrel of devious fun.
Speaking of doubt: Ulin is chockful of that, too. He has a few axes to grind—subtly, or maybe not so subtly—as he skips along. Perhaps a Catholic in serious doubt himself, the playwright has Father Michael wrangle with his pull between Campo’s promising manipulations and Catholic morality, as voiced by Monsignor. Uncertain which way to lean, Father Michael grabs his collar off more than once as the conflicting ideology tug-of-war persists.
Ulin also enjoys subversive fooling around with the concept of the means justifying the ends. Do Campo’s successful means justify the ends he reaches. In particular, does the productive ruse he concocts involving hooker Chandra (Stanley) and agent Jackson ultimately qualify as fair and square? Not really. Oh, yes, Ulin is definitely prancing around the notion that from time to time, if not always, the deceitful means absolutely justify the righteous means.
Is it that result that has Angel Margaret laughing her head off near the end, or is it her triumph at Sam’s locating, despite himself, his conscience? Whatever, LuPone is in her element here, as is Alexander, who appears to be taking great joy in breaking bad. His loving it will have viewers loving him. They’re directed to mine all the naughty script exuberance by Matthew Penn, who also brings the rest of the cast right up to their level, and that means Devine, too, as Sam’s exasperated assistant. Special kudos to the innocent-faced Fontana, who’s assigned the somewhat serious role of a deeply religious man in a crisis of faith.
With Judgment Day, Ulin has the goods and has sneakily based it on the bads.
Judgment Day will be streamed beginning July 26, 2021 and will remain online through August 1. Information and link to streaming: stellartickets.com
