Theatre in Review: Job (The Flea Theatre)

	Sean McIntyre. Photo: Hunter Canning

You are, no doubt, acquainted with the story of Job as presented in the Bible, but here are some of the new features added by the playwright Thomas Bradshaw:

Joshua, one of Job's sons, strangles his sister, Rachel. He then lifts his tunic, masturbates himself into achieving an erection, and rapes her corpse to the point of orgasm.

Matthew, another of Job's sons, discovers his brother's deed; he assaults Joshua, raping him with a broomstick. "How does it feel, Joshua?" he cries. "How do you like it?"

Later, Job is attacked by a pair of his fellow countrymen, who remove his testicles and penis with a knife. One of them notes with satisfaction that he will feed these dismembered parts to his dog, because "she likes meat."

That such strenuously gory episodes come off as nothing more than detailed acting exercises carried out by the ever-talented members of the Flea's resident acting company, the Bats, is a key indicator of the utter failure of Bradshaw's Job. (These and other tactics, including some weirdly long pauses and a lengthy choreographed sequence, are among the padding needed to get this piece to the one-hour mark.) Job offers plenty of violence, most of it sexual, along with some casually blasphemous jokes, most of which suggest that the author hasn't yet seen The Book of Mormon, but their impact is surprisingly weak; in truth, Bradshaw, faced with one of the most timeless and confounding pieces of world literature, is laughably overmatched.

In Bradshaw's account, the story is put into action by a cheerfully indifferent, white-wine-swilling God and ends with Job, the suffering servant, having learned nothing for his pains. God appears in the company of his two sons, Jesus and Dionysus, who carry on like characters out of My Three Sons. ("Dad! Dad! Uncle Satan is here to see you!") Jesus and Dionysus squabble constantly. When Dionysus claims, once again, the authorship of wine, his brother snaps, "You act like you invented alcohol! We were all getting drunk long before you invented wine! Whiskey has four times the alcohol content of your watered-down shit!" There is also a sequence where God and his two sons accuse each other of farting.

Bradshaw is known as the American theatre's number-one provocateur, a term he professes to hate, but if you're going to have actors tossing penises around the stage, the term is certainly going to stick. Nevertheless, the entire enterprise has a tired feeling about it. Indeed, the most surprising thing is the thinness of Bradshaw's imagination. His Job is a cardboard carnival of horrors, a series of tawdry sideshows that have lost their ability to shock.

It's always a pleasure to see the Bats in action, and, under Benjamin H. Kamine's direction, there are several striking performances, even in these sordid circumstances. As Job, Sean McIntyre has so much presence and such a resonant speaking voice that one immediately wants to see him tackle the classical repertory. Grant Harrison's preening Jesus and Eric Folks' sullen Dionysus are distinctive comic caricatures, worthy of a smarter, funnier play. This is also true of Ugo Chukwu's God and Stephen Stout's Satan, both of which are marked by a sunny urbanity. As always, the troupe of talented young professionals can handle whatever their playwright of the moment throws at them.

As is the case with most productions in the Flea's basement theatre, the design is fairly minimal, although Ashley Farra has come up with enough outfits -- looking like they were borrowed from the set of a '50s Hollywood Biblical epic -- to dress the large cast. Jonathan Cottle's lighting design, however, is quite strange. The scenes featuring God and Satan are lit with beautiful, bright white washes, but the scenes down on earth utilize plenty of saturated color, much of it emanating from side positions, an approach that often leaves the actors' faces in the dark. This must have been what Kamine wanted, but it certainly doesn't provide the cast with much in the way of support. Aaron Green's set and Jeremy S. Bloom's sound design are both okay.

Bradshaw is a polarizing figure among critics and his admirers tend to praise the very things that this reviewer finds so objectionable. They find his frat house humor and cartoon sensibility to be cheeky and fresh. To my eyes, the constant parade of allegedly sensational effects, deprived of context, quickly becomes numbing. According to Ben Brantley's Times review, "Mr. Bradshaw has described his deadpan sensational style as 'hyperrealism,' or 'reality without the boring parts.'" I beg to differ; Job is loaded with boring parts.--David Barbour