Don’t be misled by the intimidating title. The latest effort from the superb playwright Samuel D. Hunter doesn’t deal in grandiose theological or philosophical arguments. Rather, it’s simply about two men forging an unlikely friendship while dealing with the pitfalls that life inevitably throws our way. A Case for the Existence of God, receiving its world premiere at the Signature Theatre, represents theater at its most humanistic and features two performances so symbiotic they almost become one.
The setting is a cramped office cubicle that looks even more confining perched in the middle of the theater’s large stage, the emptiness surrounding it feeling almost cosmic. There, two men are discussing a business situation. Ryan (Will Brill), who barely makes ends meet working at a yogurt factory, is applying for a mortgage. He hopes to purchase twelve acres of land, the site of which has a personal meaning for him, so he can build a house there for him and his toddler daughter. Keith (Kyle Beltran), who has to keep reminding the financially illiterate Ryan that he’s a “mortgage broker, not lender,” is attempting to find a way to help him.
The two men, who both live and hail from Twin Falls, Idaho (the locale of many of Hunter’s works), couldn’t be more different. The uneducated Ryan, who is white, grew up in near poverty and endured a deeply troubled upbringing. Keith, Black and gay, grew up in relative prosperity thanks to his lawyer father, enjoying vacation trips to Europe and attending university where he earned dual degrees in English and Early Music (how he wound up in a low-level financial job is left unexplained).
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★★ review here.]
During their meetings, Ryan and Keith discover that, despite their differences, they have one thing very much in common. Both are desperately fighting to hold onto their toddler daughters. Ryan is fighting for custody during a contentious divorce, while Keith is hoping to permanently adopt the little girl he’s been raising as a foster father. He’s so on edge that he immediately suffers a panic attack upon receiving a phone call from his social worker.
Ryan, not particularly articulate (he doesn’t know the meanings of the words “harrowing” or “taciturn”), nonetheless hits the nail on the head when he tells Ryan, “I think we share a specific kind of sadness, you and me.”
That shared sadness proves the focus of the intimate 90-minute drama. Consisting of nothing more than a series of quiet conversations, occasionally punctuated by misunderstandings and angry conflicts, the play is a beautifully observed character study in which we come to care deeply about these two men and their travails.
That’s due not only to the incisive dialogue but also the superb performances of Beltran and Brill, who inhabit their characters in such a lived-in manner that you never once feel they’re acting. (That the two men were once college roommates in real-life doesn’t come as a surprise, considering their incredible onstage rapport.) David Cromer, a director particularly attuned to subtlety, has staged the piece with heartbreaking sensitivity.
There are some problematic aspects. The scene transitions can be confusing, since the action is solely performed in the small cubicle space despite several shifts in locale. It seems a deliberate decision on the part of director Cromer and scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado to visually emphasize the limitations faced by the characters, but it nonetheless proves frustrating. The production would have benefited from being presented in a more intimate space. And the final epilogue, the nature of which won’t be revealed here, will likely prove divisive, although I found it to be a gorgeous grace note to this deeply empathetic drama.
