Ding-dong. You know the feeling. The doorbell rings and at the door stands a stranger with a stack of proselytizing literature.
This is the scenario that launches Evan Smith’s “The Savannah Disputation,” a delicious 90-minute romp that Live Theatre Workshop opened to a sold-out house Saturday night.
The action takes place in the Southern home of two Catholic sibling sisters, not nuns: Mary, played by Rhonda Hallquist, is the tough, aggressive — OK, mean — sister who slams the door and threatens to call the police when evangelist Melissa, portrayed by Candance Bean, arrives.
Sweet, demure Margaret, Carlisle Ellis’ role, who has overactive tear ducts, invites in the fundamentalist Melissa. Margaret, who listens to the bubbly evangelist, begins to question her beliefs. Mary, determined to show the evangelist is a fraud, plots to invite Melissa back to the house while parish priest Father Murphy, Keith Wick, is there for his usual Thursday night dinner.
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Playing upon some of the myths and misconceptions of Catholicism, the script does not poke fun at religion. Rather, it good-naturedly exposes that many people do not know the fundamental beliefs of their faith, that religion is open to many interpretations and that there are plenty of commonalities among faiths.
Hallquist, with gray in her hair and wearing loose-fitting housefrocks, has an intimidating presence, while Ellis, wearing embellished polyester warmups, offers a delicate contrast. The two accomplished actors make evident the complex sibling relationship, revealing how the they complement each other, even as they bicker.
With a long, curly blond wig and tight-fitting jeans, Bean is over-the-top funny as the effervescent Bible-thumping evangelist hoping to save the two Catholics from eternal damnation.
And Wick effects a Southern drawl and embodies the intelligent, doesn’t-have-all-the-answers priest.
Director Sabian Trout, the theater company’s artistic director, uses the intimate theater space to plop the audience in the sisters’ Southern living room, decorated with pictures of Jesus and Mary, crosses, and a straw hat with a flower-strewn band. The pièce de résistance? A crocheted doily on the television.
Trout uses the stage space well, as the cast frolics among claims and counter claims, dueling Bibles, assumptions and revelations. She ramps up the physical comedy, too.
The “The Savannah Disputation” is a bright, well-acted, well-directed entertaining theater experience filled with irreverent humor that might challenge your perspectives.
