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‘God’s Man in Texas’ @ Georgia Ensemble
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “God’s Man in Texas.” Grade: C+. 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday. 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Through Sunday. $23-$33. Georgia Ensemble Theatre, Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. 770-641-1260, get.org. Bottom line: Few grace notes.
“God’s Man in Texas” has relocated to Roswell, where David Rambo’s commentary on the mega-church phenomenon is running like a long-winded sermon that takes forever to say “Amen.”
Directed by Robert Farley as the 15th season opener of his Georgia Ensemble Theatre, “God’s Man” is a three-hander with mechanically clunky scenery and a narrative that has all the immediacy of the Second Coming.
That said, it would be a grievous sin of omission to overlook Clayton Corzatte, a top-drawer Broadway trouper who has trod the boards with everyone from Helen Hayes and Katharine Hepburn to Bert Lahr and Uta Hagen.
In Rambo’s study of megalomania and paternity, Corzatte delivers a masterfully calibrated turn as Dr. Philip Gottschall, the 81-year-old leader of a Houston-based Southern Baptist empire who comes across like a combination of King Lear, Richard Nixon and Billy Graham. (Or is it Oral Roberts?)
Gottschall, a friend of the Bush clan and the kind of pulpit bull who keeps his acolytes quaking in their robes, is in complete denial about his inevitable loss of power. If God doesn’t strike him dead, looks like the unauthorized search committee will. Can you say “paranoid”?
But the old prune’s fears are assuaged — temporarily, at least — when a gallant young evangelical from San Antone is chosen as his co-pastor. Dr. Jeremiah Mears (Mark Kincaid) calms the waters with his homespun style and heartfelt testimony.
Will the old conservative zealot find the son he never had in the fatherless newcomer? Will it end in victory or bitterness? After meandering his way into a dramatic dead-end, the playwright tries to back out of the corner with an 11th-hour revelation involving Gottschall’s chief lackey, Hugo Taney (played with annoying tediousness by Barry Stoltze).
Ultimately, “God’s Man in Texas” offers little in the way of emotional sustenance or humor. Kincaid finds the charm and charisma of his character, but he tests the audience’s generosity with that prolonged final benediction.
At the end of the show, I actually heard one patron ask another sarcastically, “Don’t you want to go back and listen a little longer?” No way, fellas. Pass that collection plate on by, and save your change for the toll booth.
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By miss daisy
September 20, 2007 7:16 PM | Link to this
AMEN!