Theatre in Review: Is God Is (Soho Rep)

	Alfie Fuller. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

The playwright Aleshea Harris wants your attention, and she'll get it, by any means necessary. Is God Is is a violent horror comedy with a body count to equal any Jacobean revenge tragedy, several Quentin Tarantino-meets-spaghetti-western touches, and the most toxic set of parents since the House of Atreus turned to the Furies for family therapy. Harris doesn't belong in such august company just yet, having penned what is more an act of provocation than a fully realized play. She also owes a debt of gratitude to her director, Taibi Magar, whose knack for bravura staging marks her as someone to watch. Is God Is runs the gamut from gripping to grating, but, in any case, it makes an impression.

Anaia and Racine, African Americans and sisters, as children survived a fire that left each of them horribly scarred. Racine's damage is confined to her arms, back, and neck, whereas Anaia's face is ravaged almost beyond recognition, to the point that "people don't let their eyes meet hers." We can gaze on them both with impunity, since the horror of what happened to them is vitiated by Cookie Jordan's stylized makeup design, which looks as if lines of Silly Putty have been drizzled on their upper bodies, creating spider web-like patterns. It's a startlingly artificial look that leaves one wondering if we are meant to feel on a gut level the brutality done to them -- or if it's all a playwright's gambit, an easy shock to get the story going.

These sisters are a feisty pair -- very ghetto in manner and speech -- and they live highly functional lives, with jobs, and, in Anaia's case, a boyfriend (a situation that Racine looks upon with suspicion). They have always believed themselves to be orphans; then a letter arrives from their mother, who lives in in a nursing home; she is a husk of a woman, rasping out her few remaining breaths. She is seen through the horizontal window built into the upstage wall of Adam Rigg's set; all that is visible is her fire-ruined face -- the skin is flaking off, and her nose appears to have been whittled away -- and we hear her labored breathing, which is imbued with the unmistakable sound of a death rattle. Explaining her absence from their lives, she says she wanted Anaia and Racine to believe she was dead: "Who want a mama with a body like uh alligator?"

Anaia and Racine refer to their mother -- known only in the script as She -- as God. "Well, she made us, didn't she?" says Racine, by way of explanation, an admirable sentiment if theologically faulty. Anyway, the god she resembles most is Shiva, the Destroyer. She has summoned them because she has baleful news: The fire was the vindictive act of her husband -- their father -- who left them all behind to perish in the flames. Worse, she drops the bomb that their father is alive, and charges them with the task of killing him: "Make him dead, real dead. And bring me back some treasures from it. Gotta do it quick, too. My body ready to go. We on a time crunch."

Off go Anaia and Racine, armed with a stone inside an athletic sock, on a search for their lost father that quickly becomes a killing spree, thinning out the supporting cast considerably. These encounters -- with a strung-out lawyer, their ladylike stepmother, and their stepbrothers (a sullen homosexual and a would-be rap poet who eats his ear wax) -- are like so many panels in a comic book: brash, bloody, and utterly lacking in recognizable psychology. A certain predictability sets in as each interview turns ugly, climaxing in a series of fatal body blows. Not that any of it seems to matter: The victims are lazily drawn, not detailed enough to seem real, yet lacking the bite of true caricature. They exist only to be knocked off. Pity the production's wardrobe supervisor, who has to get out all those bloodstains after every performance.

Some of Anaia and Racine's homicidal adventures are accompanied by video sequences -- seen on small televisions placed upstage -- that look as if they were culled from some half-forgotten Italian western of the 1960s. And when the father finally appears, his costuming and manner call to mind Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name. This is the point where Is God Is catches fire, making a full-throated lunge for melodrama that is shockingly successful. If their mother is God, their father is the devil himself, a slippery, silver-tongued con artist capable of lulling his victims with displays of sweet reason, then, cobralike, going in for the kill. Anaia, who goes toe-to-toe with this monster, gives as good as she gets, asking him, "You were mad 'cause [my mother] didn't want you to touch her so you set her on fire?" "It's more nuanced than that, but yes," he replies. Racine snaps, "That don't strike you as a bit of an overreaction?"

The final father-daughter battle, and its eerie aftermath, has an undeniable primal power; still, many things about Is God Is irritate, not least the characters' habit of talking about themselves in the third person. A number of running gags -- the mother's nursing home is located in "Oscarville, MS/AL/FL/TX/TN/AR/KY" and a stepbrother's excessive devotion to arugula -- fall flat. The use of horse-opera tropes feels entirely random, lacking the faintest connection to the action onstage. An eleventh-hour revelation about Anaia comes out of nowhere, giving the impression that it was added to the script at the last minute, almost as an afterthought.

Magar's direction imposes more control on this unruly collection of theatrical devices than one might think possible; these include a coup de théâtre with Rigg's set that radically reshapes the stage for the climactic death match. Even so, not everyone in the talented cast can transcend their thinly conceived characters. Alfie Fuller and Dame-Jasmine Hughes are lively presences as Anaia and Racine, dominating the action with their frank, wisecracking ways and holding their own in J. David Brimmer's savage fight scenes. But the standout performances come from Jessica Frances Dukes as She/God/the mother, a presence so spectral that she seems to be haunting herself, and Teagle F. Bougere as the father, as coolly rational a psychopath as we have seen in some time. Nothing in the design makes as strong an impression as Rigg's scenery and video sequences, but Montana Levi Blanco's costumes are in sync with the playwright's quick-sketch approach, and the lighting designer, Matthew Richards, creates some bold effects with saturated color and hanging LED strips. Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste's sound design includes Baroque music, birdsong, static, and crackling flames.

Is God Is is driven by a powerful, free-floating rage, but it leaves one wondering what it is all about. At times, Harris seems fascinated by the seemingly inexorable pull of family ties, even under the most sordid conditions; then again, she pulls ideas and tropes from so many places that it's hard to avoid the sneaking suspicion that she doesn't mean any of it. Her play is either the bleakest of tragedies or a blatant piece of manipulation, an attempt to see how far she can go in exploiting this material for the most sensational effects. It's telling that it is so hard to discern her intentions. Still, even if her play is a dramatic shell game, she's an adept player. Is God Is might leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, but I'm betting it will leave you curious to see what it's author does next. -- David Barbour