Numerous unknown variables yield disarmingly plentiful rewards in the Actor’s Express premiere production of “Oh, To Be Pure Again,” which involves the personally and spiritually conflicted counselor at an evangelical church summer camp in Texas, and a small group of inquisitive and impressionable teenaged girls who are under her supervision for the week.
First and foremost among those factors is the promising playwright Kira Rockwell, newly relocated here, whose handful of earlier credits have been produced by companies in Boston, Chicago and New York. Another is visiting director Kate Bergstrom, also making an auspicious local debut, whose resume on the regional theater scene is somewhat more established and prolific. It’s likely Atlanta audiences haven’t heard the last from the transplanted Rockwell — but, hopefully, that goes for Bergstrom, too.
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
In addition to the unforeseeable thrill of being caught off-guard by the perceptive potency of Rockwell’s writing and the stylish skill of Bergstrom’s direction, the show’s cast primarily consists of an assortment of fresh talents who work similar wonders, and whose collective naturalism bodes quite well for each of their future acting careers. Of the actresses portraying the young girls, the only familiar face (at least to me) belongs by Ebony Jerry, a standout from Out Front’s “When Last We Flew” (2022). The others are Brandy Bell, Aliya Kraar, Erin North and Alejandra Ruiz.
Veteran actor Brian Kurlander has a cameo late in the play as one girl’s father. Otherwise, even the highly challenging central character of the counselor is daringly entrusted to a relative newcomer, Shannon Murphy, who nevertheless exacts the role with a delicacy and depth that belies her comparative inexperience. An agreeable Andres Figueroa, making his first professional appearance out of college, completes the ensemble as her fiancee and counterpart, a boys’ counselor at the camp.
Murphy is Becca, who confesses to Figueroa’s Adrian in the opening scene that she’s torn between her earthly desires for him and her religious devotion to God. “I want you more than anything, but not before God,” she says. Using the same vernacular, he responds, “Our fire for each other is a gift from God.” Accordingly, when the camp is temporarily forced to deal with the lack of any running water, she ponders the possible “supernatural correlation”: “What is God trying to teach us?”
Together, Rockwell and Bergstrom create a multidimensional diversity of types to represent the adolescent girls in Becca’s charge. The gregarious Jean Ruby (North) is secretly confused by her own “dirty” sexuality. Rachel (Kraar) is described as a “powerful prayer warrior,” although her habitual fasting suggests more troubling issues. With no father figure in her real life, Luna (Bell) questions putting her faith in a heavenly one. The withdrawn Autumn (Ruiz) struggles with “finding my laugh again.” Trina (Jerry) is the least complicated of them, or perhaps simply the script’s least developed.
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
(To be sure, while the characters performed by Bell, Ruiz and Kraar are given self-examining monologues to deliver directly to the audience — or are they speaking to a higher power? — for some odd and disappointing reason, those played by Jerry and North are not.)
The show is staged in-the-round, featuring the inventive scenic design of Stephanie Busing. All four corners of the theater space are lined by large trees to indicate the camp’s wooded setting. A platform situated above and behind one section of seats is utilized for a couple of rock-climbing sequences. The atmospheric lighting is by Toni Sterling; a particularly arresting flourish depicts excerpts from a “Holy Spirit fire session,” including a series of striking tableaux interspersed with dramatic blackouts.
Kurlander’s well-acted, if arguably unnecessary, arrival as that Bible-quoting father eventually confronts these professed “unholy diamonds” with a litany of “purity metaphors,” essentially objectifying the girls in patriarchal terms as “daughters of a King” and “brides of Jesus,” and lecturing them about “honoring God with your bodies.”
Do they really need him to tell them what to think or how to feel about themselves? In the mesmerizing final moments of “Oh, To Be Pure Again” — best left unspoiled here, but partly involving a divinely envisioned swarm of swirling fireflies — the answer is a clear and resounding no.
THEATER REVIEW
“Oh, To Be Pure Again”
Through March 26. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. $20-$38. Actor’s Express (at King Plow Arts Center), 887 W. Marietta St. NW, Atlanta. 404-607-7469, actors-express.com.
Bottom line: A pure pleasure to behold.
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