After having high hopes for this show and hearing so much negativity early on, I went in with very tempered expectations. My tempered expectations were well exceeded. Whoo!
I won't make an argument for GRACE as a great play, but I do think it's a very good one, and for 100 intermissionless minutes I was totally engaged. Paul Rudd employs his so-sincere-you-can't-believe-you're-believing-him persona to great effect and gets genuine laughs from joke lines and non-joke lines alike. Michael Shannon's character -- on whom the story ultimately hinges -- mirrors the play, first eliciting laughs with his barely contained rage before revealing that rage a direct symptom of his shattered heart and increasingly withering soul.
Kate Arrington doesn't fare quite as well. I'd like to say it's because her character isn't as multi-dimensional or she bears the brunt of the exposition or something, but I don't think that's the case. She's consistently sharing scenes with actors who are hugely charismatic on their worst days, and she disappears between them sometimes. Her big second-half monologue immediately follows Mr. Shannon's. After he eviscerates with his tragic story, her rebuttal can't help but feel anticlimactic.
I was also worried that Ed Asner was being wasted in a thankless role, but he ends up being a thematic lynchpin and his fate was -- for me -- one of the bigger surprises of the night. He also has a pretty killer first-act monologue about his family hiding Jews during World War II that he knocks out of the park.
As for the play's "point" -- well, it occurs to me that maybe we expect plays -- or any artworks -- that deal directly with religion (specifically, belief versus nonbelief) to have something big to say on that topic. My takeaway from GRACE was much simpler, but no less profound. It's hard to discuss the finer points without going into spoilers, but ultimately what I think we're given is all to do with the title.
All four characters -- at least once and sometimes repeatedly -- strongly express either a desire for, a confusion by, or a condemnation of how we as human beings can achieve a state of grace in THIS world. And I think it raises some pretty potent questions. How valid is a wish for grace from a nonbeliever? Does our spirituality dictate our ability to recognize grace when it's bestowed upon us or -- perhaps more importantly -- when we're given the opportunity to bestow it upon someone else? How does our worldview affect our own ability to accept grace when it's presented to us? And most significantly, can even a nonbeliever recognize grace as manifestation of a kind of divinity?
And I think the play fairly blatantly wants to remind us that we have the opportunity to bestow grace on others even when it seems like the most impossible thing in the world. And recognizing that reminder is easy. But translating it to real-life action is considerably more difficult, and too often, for some people, all but impossible. So, I don't think this play is about belief at all. If anything, it purports that faith -- or a lack thereof -- is abitrary. It's much more concerned with earthbound matters. Religion does not have a monopoly on grace, the play says, and the sooner one recognizes that, the better equipped one is to deal with the hardships of this world and the more prepared they may be not just to bestow love, but to accept it, as well.
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