God, Gays & Guns, Redux: Connor Stephens Arrives Off-Broadway

Cornelius Hill - Priest & Chief Among the Oneida (1907)

“Oh, Jesus, I have to stop you right now. I love you dearly: You're a smart and sweet man, but you are so wrong about what matters and where the eyes should visit. The things you find so important--the attention, the prizes, the approval--yes, they matter, and never so much than when they disappear. But I'm old now, and I've walked a long and rocky road, and what really mattered, what should matter most to you, is the rare and gorgeous experience of reaching out through your work and your actions and connecting to others. A message in the bottle thrown toward another frightened, loveless queer; a confused mother; a recently dejected man who can't see his way home. We get people home; we let them know that we're here for them. This is what art can do. Art should be the arm and the shoulder and the kind eyes--all of which let others know you deserve to live and to be loved. That is what matters, baby. Bringing people home.”

- TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Last night we had the privilege of attending the opening night of The Crusade of Connor Stephens at its new off-Broadway home in the Jerry Orbach Theater, once-home of the record-breaking The Fantasticks.  You may recall that I reviewed this show when it was included in the Midtown International Theatre Festival last summer, so I won't tell you the whole plot again.  Sufficient to say, it felt even more timely the second time around here in the Drumpfpocalypse, post Pulse Nightclub massacre, when mass shootings are a near-daily occurrence and demonizing one another with half-truths is what subsists for news.

Almost the entire cast* returned for this new production, which says something about their commitment to this important story and their devotion to writer-producer Dewey Moss. At this point I could not in good faith accept a paid gig to write something unbiased about the show because in the year since I have gotten to know Dewey and Jacques Mitchell (Bobby) and consider them friends.  However I will still say the show was just as gripping and cathartic the second time around, especially for anyone who has been church-burned or lived under the thumb of a controlling narcissist (well that would be the whole country at the moment, would it not?) as so skillfully portrayed by James Kiberd (Big Jim).

I did, however, write a brief interview of Ben Curtis (Jim, Junior) which appeared in the June edition of the Episcopal Journal. We discovered when we met in 2015 that we're both "PK's" (preacher's kids); my dad being a Roman Catholic deacon and his a now-retired Episcopal priest. I thought that would make an interesting angle for a story, given the contrast between his fundamentalist on-stage father and his real-life dad's progressive stance.  The text of my interview is below:

God, gays, and guns collide in The Crusade of Connor Stephens, a play written and produced by Dewey Moss which has its off-Broadway premiere later this month after an award-winning workshop run last summer. I caught up with former Dell computer pitchman Ben Curtis, who will reprise his role as Jim, Jr., a gay man whose adopted daughter's death puts him at odds with his firebrand minister father "Big Jim" and thrusts the family into the media spotlight. Ben hails from Chattanooga, Tenn, where his father was Rector of Grace Church from 1979-1994. Besides acting, he operates a yoga and wellness practice with his fiancee and performs in a variety of musical groups.

Q. I was proud to hear you identify as an Episcopalian in your recent interview with ESPN. Given your work helping others with their own health and spiritual journeys, how does the church fit into who you are and what you believe?

Well it certainly formed  some of my earliest beliefs as a Christian and my roots in spirituality. The church provided education, structure and community that I needed as a young wild rebellious PK (preacher's kid). It also helped me develop my early ideas of faith. Our parish and the Episcopal Church in general is so open-minded and accepting of all people, so that really instilled my core feelings as a child that all people are equal and all are loved by God. I still believe that today, and my father, while he was the rector of our parish, walked the walk.

Q. Like your character, you grew up as a "preacher's kid". How did that experience help you portray Jim, Jr.?

Well, it certainly helped me understand the pressures of being in the spotlight of the church. I was a satisfied customer of the Episcopal Church, so I was involved as an acolyte or in the choir. Nevertheless, if I made a mistake or got in trouble, you can be certain that everyone knew about it. However, unlike Jim, Jr., my father did not force me to think one way nor tell me that I was going to hell if I thought a different way.

Q. The Episcopal Church has been vocal about LGBT justice, as well as gun violence, both themes which the play explores. How did being an Episcopalian help shape how you see these issues?  

I feel blessed to have grown up in a church very different from the one that Jim, Jr., did, which sounds very oppressive. I have friends who grew up in churches like that and who were put in conversion therapy, which of course is never effective.

I am very grateful to have grown up in such an accepting environment that allowed me to form my own ideas of God and spirituality. I feel sorry for people who are told by their church or pastor that being a Christian is black and white: “you're either saved or you ain't.” I believe our God is a loving God and Jesus was a great prophet. We can learn a lot from his stories and how he treated other people, ESPECIALLY the outcasts or those “different” from him.

Q. How do you relate believably to an on-stage "family" whose values contrast so starkly with your character's?

It's not hard. I don't believe in their “Christian morals” as a person so it's fairly easy to be disgusted by them on stage. Furthermore, they're brilliant actors, so the tension on stage is quite palpable. That and when your stakes and intentions are clear as an actor, the rest tends to work itself out.

Q. If Dewey told you that you had to play Big Jim tomorrow, could you do it? What would you do to get into that character?

Absolutely! I've played lots of “complicated” and “awful” characters. Each character wants something. If you know what yours wants, then that's your job on stage: to listen and to get what you want, or at least try. This script is also well-crafted so the words guide you. No matter what kind of character I play, I always find and play the truth and the humanity. Even Big Jim is quite human.

  Playbill for The Crusade of Connor Stephens.

Top row, from left, Clifton Samuels (Dean), James Kiberd (Big Jim), Katherine Leask (Marianne), Julie Campbell (Kimmy), Jacques Mitchell (Bobby). Front row, from left, Kathleen Huber (Viv'in), Alec Shaw (Kris), Ben Curtis (Jim, Jr.).          The Fantasticks this is not. A makeshift memorial as you enter the theater sets the tone for this gripping and cathartic play. 
    Writer-Producer Dewey Moss hugs James Kiberd (Big Jim) during the curtain call on opening night of The Crusade of Connor Stephens. From left, Jacques Mitchell (Bobby), Julie Campbell (Kimmy), Ben Curtis (Jim, Jr.), Alec Shaw (Kris). At right, Katherine Leask (Marianne), Clifton Samuels (Dean).       

The man of the hour. Writer-producer Dewey Moss beams as the audience shows some love. From left, Jacques Mitchell (Bobby), Julie Campbell (Kimmy), Ben Curtis (Jim, Jr.), Alec Shaw (Kris). At right, James Kiberd (Big Jim), Katherine Leask (Marianne), Clifton Samuels (Dean). 

  

Ben Curtis (Jim, Jr.) and yours truly on the red carpet.

NOTE: James Padric, who portrayed Kris in the workshop run, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer shortly after the production.  He is doing well but could still use your support in the face of hefty medical bills.  Thank you!

God, Gays & Guns All Collide in a New Play

St. Mary Magdalene - First Witness to the Resurrection

My father's observation of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was that the viewer squirms in hir seat, feeling as if s/he's witnessing a private conversation of which s/he should not be part. And that is precisely the point.  Two couples embark on a visit having no idea what intimate secrets are to be revealed, and leave the encounter permanently changed.

By contrast, the characters in Dewey Moss's new play The Crusade of Connor Stephens gather all knowing, by varying degrees, what to expect from one another.  Two families joined by the common tragedy of a child's murder are connected only by the parents, a same-gender couple in whose home the story unfolds. They come from different towns and vastly different world-views, a fact that becomes wrenchingly clear as each character in turn unpacks the baggage that the sudden loss of a little girl has forced into the light.  When the play was selected as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival, the mass shooting at a gay bar in Orlando had not yet occurred, but that tragedy, coupled with the rhetoric coming from the presidential campaign, served only to make it more timely, and all performances of the limited run were sold out.

As the curtain rises, Jim Jr., broodingly portrayed by Ben Curtis (yes, the Dell spokesman... he's done quite a bit since then including starring opposite Richard Chamberlain in We Are the Hartmans), wants to drown his sorrows alone. His husband Kris (James Padric) is asleep, numbed physically and emotionally by medication; he was also struck by a bullet trying to save his daughter Tess. Kris's sister Kimmie (Julie Campbell) fusses over preparations for any post-funeral callers.  Her husband Bobby (Jacques Mitchell) arrives with Jim's mother Marianne (Katherine Leask) and grandmother Vivi'n (Kathleen Huber) in tow; the latter in a wheelchair.  Marianne reveals news Jim wasn't hoping for: his father "Big Jim" (James Kiberd) also plans to come by.

Big Jim would be a caricature of the blowhard southern evangelical preacher you love to hate if it wasn't so rapidly clear how thin a veneer his confident persona really is. Before he even arrives, his wife--ignoring whatever needs her grieving son and his husband might have--wants special tea made for him.  When he finally does bluster in, he immediately tries to establish control of everybody, ordering his mother to return to her wheelchair for no other reason than because that's what he wants. Moss quickly establishes the familiar pattern of an abuser; Big Jim manages to put down everybody in the room and anchor himself as the superior man of God.

Focusing on the handsome and athletic Bobby, the preacher wants badly to impress this newcomer with his ever-expanding church campus and involve him in it somehow. In doing so, he reveals his disappointment in Jim Jr. right in front of him with no regard for his feelings, causing everybody else to wince, but we can tell by the weary near-lack of reaction that his son is quite aware of his father's disdain.

Kris emerges, wild-eyed and disoriented. Who are these people in my house?  Jim and Kimmy hurry to settle him and it becomes clear that his fragile state buys him no free pass from his husband's family.  As the the story unfolds we learn that both Big Jim and Marianne have long blamed Kris for their son's same-gender attraction.

Jim Jr. (BEN CURTIS) comforts his husband Chris (JAMES PADRIC)
PHOTO CREDIT: Dewey Moss.  Used with permission.

As they prepare to leave for the funeral, Dean, an associate from Big Jim's church, arrives visibly distraught and detains the pastor with some urgent news. He received a letter sent by the killer Connor Stephens, prior to the murder and his own death (at his own hand?). Connor was a member of the church, a troubled youth who had been "saved" along with his mother by the charity of the organization.  In the letter he makes his motive for the killing clear, and--as the first act ends--the preacher is left alone to contemplate his own role in his son's daughter's death.

During the intermission, my cynical mind went back to how Big Jim tried to court Bobby, and I thought of the countless stories of vulnerable young men taken in and exploited by those they should have been able to trust. Cynical me wondered if we were going to learn there was something unseemly going on between Connor and either Dean or Big Jim himself. As the action resumes after the funeral, the whole story is painfully revealed as each character engages in some soul-baring.  Deep-seated resentments come to light, and alliances shift at least somewhat... the grip Big Jim has on his his family may be weakened if not failing completely.  After Jim Jr. learns Connor's motive (sorry, no spoilers. I'm hoping this play "has legs" and you get a chance to see it!), his father, fearing he'll be ruined if the truth gets out, tries to enlist everybody in downplaying the matter in the hope the story will slip from public attention.  Kris and his family are incensed, and we hope that Big Jim is going to get the take-down he so desperately deserves. Bobby or Jim, Jr. could slug him, his wife or mother could verbally eviscerate him, but ultimately he's already done the worst damage to himself.

Big Jim (JAMES KIBERD) verbally spars with Bobby (JACQUES MITCHELL)
PHOTO CREDIT: Dewey Moss. Used with permission.

The real hero of the story ends up being Grandma Vivi'n.  Without raising her voice, she orchestrates conversations that need to happen to keep the painful revelations coming.  She challenges her daughter-in-law to stand up to her husband and finally be a mother to her son after failing him for so long. And--when the time is right--she shares a long-secret truth that nobody is prepared to hear.

Grandma Vivi'n (KATHLEEN HUBER)
PHOTO CREDIT: Dewey Moss. Used with permission.

The play was staged as the Workshop Theater, a tiny space.  It deserves more eyes, particularly as the topic could not be more relevant during this troubled summer.  However, being so close to the players, close enough to see them twitch at one another's words, brings that uncomfortable intimacy that might be lost in too large a house. Curtis's Jim Jr. in particular, speaks very little but says so much with grimace and gesture that--for me, anyway--I felt like I knew him intimately and understood his pain.

You wish you weren't so close at times, right in the room hearing the things these people have been carrying around for so long, but we need to be there. Lost behind the aggregate statistic and sensational headlines, every gun-related incident wounds many more victims than the ones the bullets actually hit. Every sweeping condemnation flung from a pulpit causes collateral damage to people who never graced the pews. The day we stop seeing those affected as people like us, worthy of our sympathetic tears, is the day all hope is lost.