Love the Sinner

Canadian playwright Drew Pautz created ripples at the Soho
Theatre with his first play, Someone Else’s Shoes. He
now makes waves with his second at the National, a cunningly written clash of
religious cultures across continents; and the story of a modern
marriage.

Love the Sinner starts in the middle of a
religious conference in Africa. The delegates have come to an impasse while
discussing homosexual bishops and same-sex blessings. Should they move with the
times or worry about re-painting the house of Christianity too often, and too
easily?

The African/European stand-off is resolved, with a twist, in
the second scene hotel room encounter between Jonathan Cullen’s
volunteer white layman at the conference and Fiston Barek’s black hotel
porter, a member of the Holy Mountain of Fire mission to the world.

Cullen’s sexually conflicted Michael has
“eyed” Barek’s Joseph – in a roomful of clergymen, and
one woman, closing their eyes for secrecy – and they are caught,
post-carnally, with Joseph asking for help and asylum in Britain. In the
play’s third scene, Michael is confronted at home by his wife Shelly
(Charlotte Randle) over their childlessness. She’s 39, and
desperate.

In the second act, two more great scenes show us Michael at
work in his small envelope business, going evangelically crazy until
interrupted by Shelly – Joseph has turned up at the house –
demanding explanations and sex; and a conference “wrap” in Michael’s
parish church, where Joseph has been secreted by Michael in the
basement.

It’s an unusually good plot for a modern play.
Matthew Dunster’s production, beautifully arranged on Anna
Fleischle’s adaptable set of wooden blocks and panels, has one of those
fine mini-ensembles – Ian Redford as a kindly old bishop, Paul
Bentall as a cringing vicar, Nancy Crane as priest and businesswoman, Scott
Handy as an ecclesiastical “suit” — that seem to sprout so
regularly at the NT these days.

And they are led by an exemplary trio of performances: the
tortured Cullen, who expresses a crisis in the clergy as a personal problem;
the demanding and emotionally volatile Randle, stripping for action in the
office; and the outstanding debutant Barek as the gay not-so innocent who puts
the jizz into Jesus. We have a strong and serious contender for this
year’s most promising playwright.