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100 Saints You Should Know Reviews
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A Graceful Opening to this Theater Season Review by: Beth M, Nov 16, 2007 |
Kate Foder’s "One Hundred Saints You Should Know:” A Graceful Opening For This Theater Season
By Beth Mandelbaum
I found 100 Saints You Should know to be a beautifully written and extremely well acted play, one that is both funny and sad, very moving and extremely thought provoking. It addresses and offers reflections on many extremely important and interesting themes. It perhaps can be said that it is “guilty” of being a bit too ... read more “full,” though for me this made it a more challenging piece of theater.
When I sat down to write immediatately after the play was over, I found myself writing in fragments—sort of an experience of “100 Thought You Should Think…” This is not to belittle the play. I did leave with a mind full of thoughts, questions and reflections.
This play is filled with many of life’s biggest questions: why bad things happen; the concept of good and evil in people; and the acknowledgment that everyone has the capacity for doing both good things and bad, even evil, things: that good and evil are both aspects are part of us. It addresses the possibility for forgiveness and being forgiven and the possibilities for becoming a better person. It deals with a belief in God versus a deep questioning and the ultimate loss of belief. It also deals with the challenges and complexities in the relationships between children and their parents, and the expectations that each hold of the other. Many disparate aspects are ultimately woven together as a result of a central tragedy.
The play is structured around the relationships of mothers and their children in the family of the priest, Matthew and his mother Colleen, and that of Theresa, who cleans the church office and the rectory, including the toilet, which is the image that we first see at the play’s beginning.
We see the difficulties and awkwardness of these family relationships, most strikingly Theresa’s rebellious and alienated daughter Abby who is uncontrollably mean to her mother. All of the arguing and fighting make it impossible for them to opening their hearts to each other (until the play’s final scenes).
Intimacy of any kind would seem impossible, as Abby is brutally verbal in her assaults upon, and seeming total rejection, of her mother. I sensed a great degree of anger in Abby, seemingly actually stated when she yells at her mother that if she had had enough sense not to have given birth to her out of wedlock, she wouldn’t have to be alive, living with the kind of deep unhappiness that probably underlies her behavior.
We find Matthew experiencing a deep crisis of faith, which we learn has much to do with his struggle regarding what makes a truly satisfactory and fulfilled life—Does knowing that God “has His hand on your back” sufficient for the experience of a deeply yearned for sense of love and intimacy? This is in part a story about the deep loneliness of the celibate life.
In the case of the priest and his mother, the possibility of intimacy seems to be blocked by the ways in which they pushed themselves away from each other, perhaps even unknowingly. Matthew expresses himself almost monosyllabically when his mother tries to talk with him—he is keeping his distance, probably because his situation, which is not made totally clear until a bit later in the play, would undoubted be extraordinarily painful to share. Matthew hides behind his books and Colleen hides behind her game of scrabble. There is no room or place for open and meaningful sharing.
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The issue of good and evil in the character’s lives and behaviors is one of the plays central themes. This is played out in a variety of ways.
To me, the only truly innocent character in the play would seem to be the young man, Garrett, who delivered groceries from his father’s store to the sick and disabled. Garrett is portrayed as a young man who is struggling to find and understand his sexual identity and who feels an a |
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Recommended for:
Seniors, Adults
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The Missing Saints Review by: Celery, Sep 9, 2007 |
A riveting and disturbing play about a teenage daughter and her hard working mother,as well as a priest who has been released from his rectory for conduct unbecoming.A terrible accident brings them together at a hospital and finds each one exploring their inner selves.
Extremely well performed by this small but talentes cast. |
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My recommendation:
Go see if you get a chance
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Recommended for:
Seniors, Adults
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| * Review is an opinion of a BroadwayBox user and not that of BroadwayBox.com and BroadwayBox, Inc. |
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