It intrigues intellectually but renders the drama somewhat ambiguous, without clear emotional or narrative stakes. This leaves Jesus and Lucifer waxing philosophic about the nature of faith and mankind, and leaves us in search of an anchor for their story. Davalos language, though, is spellbinding, epitomized in the rhyming verse of Luke s Act 2 speech, which reiterates Milton s compassionate defense of Lucifer. This elevated language, however, proves elusive to director Tenny Priebe, who stages the show with jarring naturalism, thereby turning his actors into talking heads instead of offering them the stylization that might help their soliloquies take flight. The dialogue celebrates language in an era when language is often brought down to its lowest common denominator.
Soliloquies often slip into verse in a way that is quite delightful.
An old man falls and sets off a chain of events that has far reaching consequences. We learn that the old man is the patriarch of a vast empire and his would be inheritors gather in the hospital waiting room to fight old battles and speculate on their own personal visions of the future. Good versus evil, innocence versus reality, these are some of the weighty issues being pondered here. Josh, played very convincingly by David Holcomb, is the counterpart, the Junior High Teacher who is being asked to come back to the corporate fold. The supporting cast all performed in a way that put it all together into a professional production well worth seeing.