‘Heaven’ has a provocative message for us on Earth
One of the joys of theater is how it takes us, the audience, to worlds unknown — giving us the chance to explore new cultures and places without leaving the comfort of a red cushioned seat. And that’s the effect at the start of Arlene Hutton’s “As It Is In Heaven,” onstage at Rollins College’s Annie Russell Theatre.
Costume designer Leah Breault’s homespun though colorful dresses certainly seem to come from another era. And these women’s manner of speaking — and public confession of their sins — feels a long way from contemporary Orlando.
But wait, look more closely under the surface of Hutton’s engaging and occasionally hypnotic play. This is a society where outsiders are treated with suspicion, those who differ from the norm are chided and those in authority can’t envision any other way that things could be.
Maybe “As It Is In Heaven” isn’t as foreign to us as we thought.
That dichotomy of the foreign and the familiar provides great intellectual satisfaction throughout the play, which is given an ingeniously simplistic staging at the Annie.
“As It Is In Heaven” is set in a 19th-century Shaker religious community; today, a mention of the Shakers will generally conjure up thoughts of furniture. So onstage we see rows of simple wooden chairs. Augmented by a few benches, they become a symbolic manifestation of the Shakers’ quiet, methodical life.
But something is interrupting that quiet. New members of the community are seeing angels, even hearing them sing. And the effect is to create division where once there was uniformity.
Arlene Hutton is the pen name of Rollins alumna Beth Lincks, who has returned to direct the show. As director, Lincks gets an appealing naturalistic style from her young actors — again, a reminder that under the odd exterior trappings, these humans are not unfamiliar.
And it could be the pent-up excitement of returning to live performance, but the actors generate a buzz under their characters’ more placid surfaces. As they gossip, their eyes dart. As they sew, their heads turn. There’s an energy to this kind of spiritual life, they seem to say.
And there are magnificent moments when that internal energy bursts free, whether in ethereal hymns or whirling dances.
Marina Russell tempers leader Hannah’s brisk, no-nonsense streak with growing confusion about what’s happening in her world — and why it isn’t happening to her. Carson Klaus also makes an impression as Polly, slightly more daring and worldly than her sisters. Lily Morse does a fine job of not overplaying the tragedies of her young mother’s life.
Though college casting can make the relative ages of the characters confusing at first, the play nicely gives compelling reasons why these different women would all end up in a Shaker community.
There’s something particularly profound in this day and age about watching myriad personalities with different backgrounds coming together because they share a common belief. It calls to mind a time when we Americans rallied around common values — values unrelated to our various religious practices. We believed in civility, science, truth.
When you have those things, maybe angels don’t matter as much.
’As It Is In Heaven’
Length: 95 minutes, no intermission
COVID-19 precautions: Distanced seating, masks for audience and actors
Where: Annie Russell Theatre at Rollins College, 1000 Holt Ave., Winter Park
When: Through Feb. 20 Cost: $20
Info: 407-646-2145