Toying with Freedom

Given that the laconic characters of “In God’s Hat” seldom waste their breath, it’s tempting to sum up the play with a single word: terrific. Still, the story begs for more description, if only to ponder why this noirish tale of loutish people feels so downright thrilling.

In the plot, Mitch has just been released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence. Roy, his brother, meets him outside the penitentiary gates with a plan to take him home to Oklahoma, a 1,500-mile drive.

“There’s nothing there for me but shame, bad memories and headstones,” Mitch laments, even though he agrees to the journey. Soon after setting out, they check into a ratty motel room (designed by Michael Reese, who has a keen eye for grimy places) to rest, and a short time later become tangled in a crime that could put them both behind bars. Or worse.

To reveal more would spoil the fun of a play that owes a deep debt to Sam Shepard and Martin McDonagh, yet manages to find a voice of its own. Richard Taylor’s script conjures up a world of relentless menace and absurd humor. His characters offer quirky observations and tart replies, and can change the mood with a pause or a stare. They are compelling creations, part sympathetic, part repellent.

As Mitch, Rhett Rossi embodies an outcast who is filled with regret and cursed with self-awareness. As the terse and watchful Roy, Tom Pelphrey is a tightly coiled spring always ready to snap. Both men seize their roles with the zeal of actors who know that they’ve found rare, prize parts and won’t waste the chance. The details in their performances — the way Mitch savors a beer, his first in a decade, or the mixture of bitterness and melancholy in Roy’s face as he surveys his newly freed brother — are exhilarating.

The supporting cast of Dennis Flanagan, Gary Francis Hope and Mike Mihm is nearly as strong, while Kevin Kittle’s direction raises the stress level through smart use of the wide stage at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. On its own, the production, by the Apothecary Theater Company, is impressive; knowing that it’s the troupe’s first (and that it has a top ticket price of $18) makes the work especially notable.

To be sure, “In God’s Hat” is not flawless. At least one major plot turn needs some massaging to make it feel completely credible, and a bit of tightening in both acts of this two-hour tale would be wise. Ultimately, however, those lapses don’t throw the play off track. The combination of a sharp script and superb performances makes for constant laughs and gasps, as well as a shiver of excitement. That shiver is one of the best feelings you can experience in theater. And that’s all that needs to be said.

 

Richard Taylor's terrific new play "In God's Hat" is contemporary Grand Guignol of a high order. As realized in director Kevin Kittle's intense and splendidly acted production, it inspires gut-grabbing terror and delivers an emotional jolt as well.

The unease begins with the brief first scene, as Roy, sturdy but nervous, waits outside a prison gate to meet his older brother, the mild-mannered Mitchell, just released after 10 years of incarceration for pedophilia. Roy clearly has a score to settle, uncertain though the score itself is. The suspense builds as the two check into a lonely motel, where Mitchell relates his horrific experiences in the pen at the hands of a murderous white supremacist named Arthur Cruter. Then who should come knocking at the door but Cruter, also just released. The first act ends in a blast of nightmarish violence. In the second act, the suspense mounts again when Early, one of Arthur's Aryan Brotherhood buddies, shows up; he's even more terrifying than Arthur.

Yes, some turns in the script may be forced, and the story itself covers familiar terrain as it delves into the background of Mitchell's affliction. But the dramaturgy is so shrewd and the performances are so convincing that you'll suspend disbelief without hesitation. The writing also plunges compellingly into profundity, as Roy expounds on his crisis of faith, movingly exorcised in the play's closing moments.

Tom Pelphrey (an Emmy Award winner for his work on the soap opera "Guiding Light"), as Roy, and Rhett Rossi, as Mitch, virtually strip the two brothers down to their anguished soles, and yet the characters remain two guys you somehow root for. Their chemistry as brothers is unassailable, capturing both the pain and humor of sibling give-and-take. Taylor's crisp dialogue has a goodly share of funny lines while remaining true to the circumstances. Dennis Flanagan as Arthur and Gary Francis Hope as Early are the all-too-real embodiments of brutal racism and unrelenting threat.

The show has been expertly mounted, from the cheapie motel room of set designer Michael Reese, which fairly oozes menace, to the makeup of Chris Halladay, who provides a complement of shudder-inducing bodily scars and slashings. It's the first outing of the Apothecary Theatre Company, formed primarily by alumni of Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts. It's an admirably hair-raising debut.

 

Tensions run high in Richard Taylor's darkly comic new drama, In God's Hat, now being presented by Apothecary Theatre Company at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, and featuring a riveting performance by Daytime Emmy Award winner Tom Pelphrey. Taylor consistently subverts expectations, as the plot takes a few unanticipated turns, and loyalties come into question. Brothers Roy (Pelphrey) and Mitch (Rhett Rossi), who has has just gotten out of prison where he was incarcerated for pedophilia, have reunited for the first time in a decade. Roy brings him to a run-down motel room, in an out-of-the-way location. He seems to have ulterior motives, although what those are remains undisclosed for a large chunk of the play. It's also unclear at first whether or not Roy was one of Mitch's victims, and if there's anything besides blood and animosity that connects the two.

The stakes get even higher with the arrival of Arthur (Dennis Flanagan), a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who once nearly killed Mitch when they were both in the pen. Mitch is understandably afraid of him, and suspicious of how he has arrived at the exact same motel that Roy has brought him. Taylor knows how to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, and director Kevin Kittle and his actors play the discomfort and anxiety of various scenes for all they're worth. An extended conversation between Roy and Arthur while Mitch is hidden away in the bathroom is full of danger and suspense. The playwright also has a rather macabre sense of humor, reminiscent of the works of Martin McDonagh or Tracy Letts.

Pelphrey constantly keeps the audience guessing about what Roy is going to do next. Rossi succeeds in the difficult task of making a convicted child molester seem sympathetic. Flanagan strikes just the right note between an unsettling charm and a sadistic brutality. As one of Arthur's skinhead brethren, Gary Francis Hope is also chillingly effective.

Throughout the play, characters invoke or question the existence of God. Given their actions, redemption seems remote, and yet Taylor doesn't rule out the possibility.

 

In God's Hat, a jolting, insightful, and riveting new play by Richard Taylor, is the kind of theatre I love most...and the kind that, as a reviewer, I dread most, because it's one of those tight, surprise-filled suspense thrillers where you hate to give anything away.

Taking my cue from the press release, I will tell you this: the play concerns two brothers, Roy and Mitch. They haven't seen each other for ten years, during which period Mitch has been in prison, doing time for sexually assaulting boys. As the play begins, Roy has arrived to bring Mitch home, and it's clear from the get-go that Roy is carrying lots of unresolved baggage with regard to his brother and his brother's crime.

Mitch, on the other hand, is reveling in his freedom. Rhett Rossi, who plays Mitch, brings marvelous detail to the rediscovery of simple pleasures almost all of us take for granted: a can of beer, a bathtub, the sun shining in a blue sky.

However, Mitch has baggage, too; perhaps most significantly a very bad enemy he made in prison, a fellow named Arthur Cruter who is a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Taylor has crafted a plot that constantly keeps us guessing, including at least one jump-out-of-your-seat gasp-inducing moment (and maybe more than one, that's up to you). But In God's Hat is no genre play: Taylor has some serious subjects on his mind, primarily the nature of evil and the weight of its damage—collateral as well as direct—on those who become its victims. This is a play about child abuse, but it's not simply a play about understanding and forgiveness. This play is about spiritual healing, the kind that occurs only when we take responsibility for saving ourselves (contrasted with, as one character puts it, hoping for God to save us instead).

The play has been superbly produced by Apothecary Theatre Company. Kevin Kittle's direction is taut and gripping throughout; he's led a fine technical staff—most notably fight director Rick Sordelet, set designer Michael Reese, and makeup artist Chris Halladay—to create a world for the play that's entirely convincing and thoroughly evocative. The ensemble is exemplary. In addition to Mike Mihm in a cameo role at the very beginning of the play, the cast features Tom Pelphrey, Dennis Flanagan, Gary Francis Hope, and the aforementioned Rossi. Pelphrey and Rossi have remarkable chemistry: we really believe they're brothers, and, more than that, that they are estranged brothers. Pelphrey is magnetic as the badly conflicted Roy, and Rossi is memorable as the damaged Mitch; both bring such intelligence and grace to their roles that we never stop hoping that what's been done to these men is somehow not going to prove irreparable. Taylor gives them wonderful articulate poetry to speak, a blend of Tennessee Williams's loquaciousness and Sam Shepard's stark imagery that binds the brothers in the play and is brought to stunning life by Pelphrey and Rossi.

Flanagan and Hope are, by design, pretty darn frightening as, respectively, Arthur Cruter and another member of the Aryan Brotherhood by the name of Early Boyle.

In God's Hat is entertaining, provocative, and intellectually stimulating theatre; it may be the most compelling drama of the summer.

 

If you've ever bitten your nails all the way down to your fingertips while watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Or refused to budge from your seat while one of the spookier Twilight Zone episodes drew to its conclusion, then you'll understand the pleasure of watching Richard Taylor's new play, In God's Hat. What's more Taylor accomplishes this without the aid of the supernatural or drop-dead gorgeous vampires.

This comedic thriller (perhaps a new genre) is directed by Kevin Kittle, who is a master at building suspense. Most of the action takes place in a sleazy, out-of-the-way motel room set designer Michael Reese has recreated with scrupulous exactness, down to the cheap furniture and generic pictures.

The story begins when Mitch (Rhett Rossi) is released from prison and his younger brother Roy (soap star Tom Pelphrey) arrives to bring him home. it takes deliciously long for us to learn exactly what Tom's crime was— and even longer to explain what let up to the awful act.

Mixed in with all the evelations are the two brothers' confrontations with Arthur Cruter (Dennis Flanagan), a psychopathic, racist killer Mitch met in prison, and Cruter's one-time friend, Early Boyle (Gary Francis Hope). Flanagan and Boyle are so excruciatingly chilling that at times the tension becomes painful. Then, just when you feel you can't take it any longer, the play takes a comedic turn with a character's totally unexpected or ridiculous response.

Without revealing too much of the plot, suffice it to say there's plenty of foreshadowing,: a knife tucked away under a shirt, blood, hidden bodies, burials and confessions. But there's also much more.

The script is filled with gallows humor that more often than not hits its mark. Hope is especially terrific in his portrayal of the weary psychopath who is unaware of the more distasteful aspects of his character (think Christopher Walken in A Behanding in Spokane).

As for the two brothers, Pelphrey's surly, aggressive and somewhat self-righteous Roy is the perfect counterweight to Rossi's passive, frightened, guilt-ridden Mitch. Even more effective is the way the two characters sometimes exchange roles until they finally learn that they are really not so different after all.

Like the very best thrillers, In God's Hat has a moral standpoint. Indeed in its own absurd way, it manages to make a potent statement on the nature of family ties (especially between brothers), the horrible effects of dysfunctional and abusive families with all their terrible secrets, the corrosive power of guilt and the possibility of redemption.

In truth, there are times when all the elements in In God's Hat do not sit entirely comfortably with each other. Sometimes the play seems to have as many mood swings as a manic-depressive. Add to that some wildly improbable coincidences, and there may be some who leave the theater scratching their heads. But one suspects there will be many more trying to calm their pounding hearts.