God willing

By Robert von Stein Redick

Agnes of God runs through January 14 at the Keystone Theater, 771-5611.

What do directors pray for at the beginning of a production? If the play is Agnes of God, it ought to be for a trio of actors ready to inject their roles with unflagging, high-voltage commitment for the length of this three-hour drama. Any play will benefit from such bravura performances; a few, like John Pielmeier’s tale of a beatific young nun who may or may not have strangled her baby, cannot succeed without it.

Agnes is one of those troubling gray-area plays (like Fifth of July or Dancing at Lughnasa) in which a painfully real pathos confronts a plot too neatly designed to showcase it. The dramatic elements could hardly be stronger: Sister Agnes, after hiding her mysterious pregnancy from the whole convent, manages through trauma-induced amnesia to hide its lethal conclusion from herself. Court psychologist Martha Livingston must effectively decide whether to jail her as a murderer or commit her as a lunatic. Miriam Ruth, the convent’s mother superior, leans disturbingly on Agnes for her own spiritual steadiness, and clearly knows more about the bloody night in question than she’s letting on.

The simplest of whodunnit structures — until the coincidences begin to pile up. These are at once the play’s chief attraction and its chief drawback. The fact that Dr. Livingston’s motives are as much personal vendetta as legal justice — her sister died of a neglected illness in just such a convent — makes her doubly interesting, but such doubling cannot go on indefinitely. By the time we learn that both Agnes and the dead sister were once called “Marie,” and that all three women (even the elder nun!) have lost children, we know we’re in too-much-of-a-good-thing territory. It is almost a relief when Agnes insists that the father is no one’s vanished uncle or long-estranged spouse, but God himself.

Suspension of disbelief, though willing as ever, needs all the help it can get in such cases. Happily enough, in the current MainPlay Productions staging, help is forthcoming. Each actor delivers conviction in spades, and together they find a synergy that is at times almost dazzling. Deborah O’Connor (Dr. Livingston) is smart and defiant, as you need to be when saying, “Bullshit!” to a Mother Superior on her own turf. Cathy Counts (as Mother Miriam) faces down this power-suit wearing dynamo with her own blend of faith and clear-eyed rhetorical sharpshooting. And Jennifer Boggs manages to be wan and frightening by turns, showing us now the innocence of an abuse survivor, now the delirium of a true believer capable of anything. If director Michael J. Tobin did offer a prayer like that suggested above, it’s been answered.

As a study in what three solid professionals can do with a fascinating but flawed script, Agnes earns at least a few hallelujahs. As for its broader appeal — a meditation on control, Catholicism, and the fate of miracles in modern life — that depends on how much sugar you can take in your coffee. This one is a triple espresso with nine spoonfuls of sugar.

Robert von Stein Redick can be reached at robvsredick@earthlink.net.