Shepherd's pie

Racing Demon breaks the Church crust

by Carolyn Clay

RACING DEMON By David Hare. Directed by David G. Kent. Set design by Howard Jones. Costumes by Frances Nelson McSherry. Lighting by Kendall Smith. With Doug Stender, Craig Dudley, Denise Cormier, James Farmer, Lisa Colbert, John Tyrrell, William Bogert, Marya Lowry, Derek Stone Nelson, R. Anthony Carrigan, Michael Poisson, and Robert Isaacson. At Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Lowell, Wednesday through Sunday through November 15.

The title Racing Demon is taken from a children's card game. But the fast fiend of David Hare's play is the hopelessness of modern urban life -- against which even a Goliath like the Anglican Church can seem a David with a slingshot. Moreover, within that tradition-girded body, there is passionate disagreement about how to fling the rock. Hare's eloquent and provocative 1990 drama, here given an impressive New England premiere, isn't a struggle between good and evil; it's a battle among do-gooders in which -- as in the namesake card game -- "the quick and confident defeat the decent and indecisive."

You might assume that a cat fight among the Anglican clergy would generate scant interest across the vestry, much less across the Atlantic. But Racing Demon is a fascinating play, full of compassion for its well-meaning if at-odds characters, who include a South London vicar fighting societal ills and his own burnt-out faith, a wet-behind-the-ears young curate with a dangerously evangelical bent, and a frustrated conservative bishop in the mood for human sacrifice. Part of a trilogy of plays about British institutions that includes Murmuring Judges and Absence of War, the work is less the one-sided polemic you might expect from the left-leaning Hare than an exploration of personal integrity and belief at the mercy of a particular brand of old-boy politics.

Like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, everyone in Racing Demon chats with God -- though the Deity proves a pretty stony communicator. "There are an awful lot of people in a very bad way," urban-jungle vicar Lionel Espy nervously informs the Big Boss in the opening scene. "And they need something besides silence." But though the play is full of jaw flapping among men, God never does act -- even in the mysterious ways for which He is famed. "Do something," a dispirited Lionel beseeches Him in the end, as the messianic curate boasts enthusiastically of putting butts in the pews and a sophisticated young member of the laity heads toward Heaven the only way we know works: by plane.

The Reverend Espy is less a salesman for the sacrament than a committed if hangdog dispenser of comfort and social services -- played at MRT to rumpled, sad-sack perfection by Doug Stender, who appears to have the weight of the world pinned to his clerical collar. A good man, Lionel's nonetheless a bit of a downer, head of a sadly dysfunctional family, and coveter of his curate's ex-girlfriend, a sympathetic non-Christian named Frances Parnell.

As for curate Tony Ferris, junior member of an urban-ministry team that also includes the homosexual Reverend Harry Henderson and goofball Reverend Donald "Streaky" Bacon, he's a true believer who doesn't find Lionel's brand of shepherding aggressive enough. Moreover, Tony's only loyalties are to God and an increasingly aggrandized image of himself as a cross between Jesus and Billy Graham. Which makes him a perfect tool for the Right Reverend Charlie Allen, Bishop of Southwark, who's out to get Lionel for being insufficiently ministerial.

No surprise that social issues fall into the cracks as politicking, both hardball and insidious, ensues -- most hilariously in a scene at the Savoy Hotel bar, where the Reverends Harry and Streaky try to discombobulate Judas-playing Tony while guzzling umbrella-clad tequila sunrises. But the wins and losses are portrayed in human, rather than ecclesiastical, terms. And Hare does not stack the Racing Demon deck as thoroughly as you might expect. Tony will strike non-believers, in particular, as a dangerous zealot, and Bishop Charlie is an iron-handed CEO done up in churchly vestments. But at least these people have faith -- and what "flock" wants a shepherd whose very crook is doubt?

Rich and spare at once, the MRT production is helmed by artistic director David G. Kent and handsomely mounted on a set by Howard Jones that marries Gothic architecture to chain link. Moreover, it's very well acted, despite some sporadic English accents. As Tony, James Farmer counters Stender's passive resistance with a mix of youthful innocence and threatening zeal. John Tyrrell and William Bogert capture both the decency and the playfulness of Reverends Harry and Streaky. Denise Cormier is a savvy, attractive Frances, and Craig Dudley's Charlie is formidable even in his clubhouse cordiality. Lisa Colbert does an affecting, distinctive turn as a battered Jamaican woman who does not want help, and Marya Lowry is haunting -- even a bit spooky -- as Espy's neglected wife.

Long a liberal watchdog of the English theater, Hare is getting a lot of exercise of late. He recently performed his own Via Dolorosa, an account of his recent journeys to Israel and Palestine, in London. His adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, called The Blue Room and starring Nicole Kidman, is headed for Broadway. And his Skylight just had its Boston-area premiere at New Repertory Theatre. Add Racing Demon to the list of reasons Hare today won't be gone tomorrow.