Susan Granger’s review of “Grace” (Broadway’s Cort Theater: 2012-2013 season)
Craig Wright’s tragi-comedy begins with three people murdered and a fourth committing suicide; an extended flashback subsequently explains whodunit and why.
Steve (Paul Rudd) is an Evangelical Christian who has moved from Minnesota to Florida with plans to open a chain of Gospel-themed motels called the Crossroad Inns, promoted by the slogan: “Where would Jesus stay?” He’s invested all his money in this dubious real-estate venture but he still needs $9 million, which he’s counting on receiving from an overseas financier, the elusive Mr. Himmerman. “I’m not a knower,” he attests. “I’m a believer.”
Steve’s lonely, neglected wife Sara (Kate Arrington) insists on befriending their despairing, reclusive neighbor Sam (Michael Shannon), a former NASA rocket scientist whose face has been horribly disfigured as the result of a car accident in which his fiancée was killed. Between seemingly endless, proselytizing conversations, they’re periodically visited by an exterminator named Karl (Ed Asner), a crusty W.W.II survivor who, as a child, lost all of his family in Nazi Germany and is now an avowed agnostic.
Playwright Craig Wright (“Six Feet Under,” “Mistakes Were Made”) doesn’t delve too deeply insofar as faith, religion and/or theology is concerned, not does he offer the satiric amusement of “Book of Mormon.” Instead, there’s a formulaic, utterly predictable plot, propelled by extremely competent actors who make the most of the flimsy parable that they’re interpreting.
Director Dexter Bullard, who previously staged this play in Chicago, adroitly shifts the action anxiously from one apartment to another, occupying the same, slowly revolving set space, cleverly designed by Beowulf Boritt. But the pacing makes the 100 minutes – without intermission – creep by.