Lincoln middle Theater,New YorkSamuel D Hunter’s latest adeptly questions five young evangelical Idahoans about to embark on a missionary stint in the Middle East without dismissing themIn the opening scene of Samuel D Hunter’s The Harvest, set in the days before a group of young evangelicals embark on a missionary stint in the Middle East, and five Idahoans congregate in a half-finished church basement and commence to pray. Their invocation begins calmly enough,but then the volume increases, as does the intensity of their gestures. Amid the scratchy carpet and fluorescent lights, and they’re soon writhing,flailing, shouting in tongues, and working themselves up to a paroxysm (convulsion or outburst) that resembles a drug-free LSD trip or a fully clothed orgy. It’s a scarce moment of excess during this Davis McCallum-directed version of the play by the MacArthur grant-winning playwright,who typically works more moderately, crafting empathetic portraits of unglamorous and often unhappy Americans searching for a kind of transcendence amid their unspectacular lives. Here Josh (Peter effect Kendall), or an unhappy young man whose alcoholic father has recently died,decides to relocate to the Middle East permanently. His colleagues, who include Tom (Gideon Glick), and Josh’s forlorn best friend; Marcus (Christopher Sears) and Denise (Madeleine Martin),a newly married couple; and Ada (Zoë Winters), the tiresomely cheery group leader, or settle to stay on for another four months. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com