Agnes of God

By James MacKillop

John Nara presents us with a paradox: He calls his company Simply New Theatre, and he has, once again, produced a drama that is neither simple nor new. John Pielmeier’s Agnes of God opened in March 1982, about the time Sarah Palin graduated from high school. Like David Mamet’s Oleanna and John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, Agnes leaves it to audiences to resolve dramatic ambiguities. What you take into the theater about reason vs. faith may or may not relate to what you take out. What you get in between is an exhilarating ride from three of the strongest performances in any community theater production this year.

Nara does not reveal to the press his motivations for choosing to do this or that work. He might be revising the biggest hits of his childhood, as he did with last year’s A Man for All Seasons. That time he proved extraordinarily prescient as none other than Syracuse University graduate Frank Langella has just followed Nara’s lead with an upcoming Broadway revival.

There are two other obvious reasons for bringing back Agnes after two decades. One is that the debate over faith and spirituality vs. secularism and rationalism is once again prominent in public discourse. Just visit any bookstore. The second is what the play offers a performer. Whatever Agnes’ dramatic merits (Pielmeier is a one-shot wonder, so far), the play offers three of the juiciest female roles in American theater of the last generation. It could well be that the delight Nara must have had in assigning these roles was his prime motivation.

The key episode in the drama takes place before the beginning of the action. A cloistered nun gave birth to a child in a convent, and its corpse was found in a waste basket. The nun claims to remember nothing of it, and a court-ordered psychiatrist comes to the convent to investigate.

News junkies will remember that a comparable episode actually took place in a convent near Rochester in the 1970s and information about it can be found online. Agnes may have been inspired by that incident, but it is by no means a dramatization of it. In Rochester the nun was a 36-year-old Irish immigrant who was allowed to travel outside the convent. The court was able to determine easily that she was impregnated while traveling, and it found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Not much promise for a drama.

Pielmeier begins instead with an exposition-filled monologue by the psychiatrist, Dr. Martha Livingston (Karis Wiggins). She tells us straight off she thinks God is a moronic fairy tale and that she bears a special bitterness toward the Catholic church. A younger sister with a religious vocation had died in the convent of an unattended appendicitis. Along with this she’s carrying quite a lot of emotional baggage, which bit by bit we realize is relevant to the questions she will be asking. She is unmarried and appears to be alone in the world.

In a drama where there is no single lead role, Wiggins’ Martha must bear the heaviest load. She has the most dialogue, appearing in all but a few short scenes. She also must master the widest array of emotions: questioner, nurturer, accuser and defender. Wiggins has been on the scene for a few years, but she really turned heads last year as the confrontational mother in Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, a professional production at the Redhouse. Much more is demanded of her here. Along with lightning-quick changes of emotion, she travels the longest arc. As the only character who breaks the fourth wall, she has to take the audience with her, sharing her doubts and her deep changes of heart.

There would be no drama if the Mother Superior (Kate Huddleston) were not a character of comparable force. Nara could hardly have cast a better person than Huddleston, who memorably portrayed Martha Livingston under the late Bob Fitzsimmons’ direction at Salt City Center 22 years ago. She knows what counterpunch is called for. A sunderer of cliche, Huddleston last wore a wimple on stage as wisecracking Sister Hubert in Nunsensations: The Las Vegas Review. Her Mother Superior curses casually and growls with conviction, “I am not a virgin!” 

In response to Martha’s charges against her, in which she is culpable, the Mother Superior convinces us she knows and loves Sister Agnes, a “special” child. Her intellectual argument that “what we gain in logic we lose in faith” carries weight. And she is anything but arrogant in reminding the probing psychiatrist, “You’ll never find all the answers, Dr. Livingston.” 

Before an audience dominantly made up of the hated liberal elitists AM talk radio keeps ranting about, Wiggins’ Livingston starts with an advantage. Huddleston begins with liabilities, including her lame opening greeting, “Dr. Livingston, I presume,” the worst first line of dialogue in any good play, ever. Huddleston makes her case not only with love and rhetoric but with dozens of endearing expressions of body language, like her roguish eye-roll around the stage when Martha offers her a cigarette. When Norman Jewison filmed Agnes of God (1985), it was Anne Bancroft as the Mother Superior who received the Academy Award nomination, not Jane Fonda as Martha Livingston.

People who remember the Jewison film version will be surprised how much more substantial the title role is, virtually a third lead. Katharine (sometimes Katie) Gibson may be less well-known than her colleagues but has already been nominated twice for Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) awards. “Mentally challenged,” as she’d be labeled in politically correct jargon, Agnes embodies a guileless innocence, like Jodie Foster’s wild child from Nell crossed with St. Therese of Lisieux. The blood flowing from piercing her palm, a possible stigmata, is real. She could be touched by the divine, or she might have the strength of will to bring it upon herself. Or maybe she brought on hysterical parthenogenesis, as frogs can in nature, impregnating herself.

Gibson’s real fireworks come in the second act, where she comes to dominate the action. “Scene-stealing” is inadequate to describe what happens; show-stopping comes closer. Three performers, here led by Gibson, whip up the action. Three characters might seem manageable for one director, but Nara generously credits Garrett Heater for his assistance.

Heater also supplies the costumes, including changes. Gertie Swanson’s set and lighting allow for evocative mood changes on the bare stage of the Mulroy Civic Center’s BeVard Studio. Abel Phillips’ raised floor comes with an agreeable creak, a summoning-up of the old convent.

Nara’s Simply New Theatre swept the SALT Awards last spring, much to the chagrin of his rivals. With Agnes of God he lays down his marker, the non-musical show to try to beat for this year.