The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: PAUL’s NONGOD
By Acton
Ancient gods cross over into our world in NONGOD (writer Leon Lone, director Caitlyn Marr), a trio of one-act plays from the artists’ collaborative PAUL that raises some promising scenarios around the rise and fall of religious ritual, sacrifice, and belief.
The evening opens with Act Casual, or 43 Pieces, a wacky story of impotent NYC creatives (Georgia Kate Cohen, Emily Ma, Jacob Morton, and Joey Rotter) not enjoying themselves while at a party that never materializes. Suddenly Osiris (Mike Spara), ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, shows up to turn the night upside down on the hunt for his detached penis. The ensemble has fun with the bitter party patter, and Rotter finds several funny moments as a stammering, pissed off neurotic. Jacob Morton’s Richard (a writer who writes nothing) channels Michael Richards’ Kramer (from that show about nothing)—but it is a good Kramer.
Egor & York was my favorite act of the night, an odd couple story of a Slavic god named Egor (Rotter) rooming with his last worshipper on Earth, a goofy Bertie Wooster-ish bachelor named York (Spara). York is smitten with the mysterious Countess Ysabel (Cohen), but manages to court her in a way that seals all their fates and leaves Egor utterly humiliated. Spara is funny as he manically tries to worship Egor just enough to keep the blessings coming, and Cohen delivers a wonderfully eerie laugh as the play concludes.
Rainmake is the rather mysterious story of a Quaker couple isolated in a ghost town as a blizzard pummels their house. Nicholas (Morton) is as kind and accommodating as his wife Delia (Ma) is cruel and demanding. They have a heated one-sided argument over moving to Mexico, interrupted by a frostbitten stranger at the door (Spara). As Nicholas tends to him, he and the stranger discuss the effectiveness of bloody sacrifices to Aztec gods, and the stranger gradually reveals himself to be more dangerous than he seemed. This odd tale ends with a gory sacrifice, at which point Delia’s apparent curse is broken, and she becomes sweet and tender.
NONGOD’s scrappy three acts take place over a wide variety of settings and time periods, with gods from far-flung civilizations, and yet there was a sameness about the character of the deities themselves that I think was a missed opportunity. All are basically stern and bossy, but we don’t get unique characterizations that nod towards why people ever thought these gods were worth worshipping in their prime.
With more development, I think some of NONGOD’s concepts and plot turns could be further fleshed out. In Act Casual, Tess (Ma) makes a (literally) uncomfortable revelation that seemed to come from out of the blue, and while Rainmake was intriguing, some plot points flew over my head: What was the stranger’s real identity? Why did the town suffer a drought? In a play about gods, it stood out that Nicholas’ Quaker faith wasn’t interrogated. Still, NONGOD is reaching for some interesting ideas, and stirred up rewarding after-theater conversations.
