Religious satire on Broadway
God is the new star on Broadway. In two recent plays, David Javerbaum’s An Act of God and Robert Askins’s Hand to God, God clearly has something to say. But what is it?
In a first for a Broadway play, An Act of God started as the Twitter account @TweetsofGod. Tweeter David Javerbaum personifies God as a cranky omniscient father frustrated by the irresponsible behavior of his children. The tweets are mostly funny, in a cheeky and politically left way. (“I know I should stop appearing in Republicans’ dreams and saying ‘I command thee to run for President!’ but dammit, it’s so friggin’ fun.”) They are sometimes theologically provocative: “If you think atheism promotes a lack of moral responsibility, you should see what happens when my son takes the blame for all your sins.” Each tweet nails the genre: a momentary insight or a witty joke—and then done.
As a Broadway play the joke stretches thin. God appears in human form, with Jim Parsons playing more or less the same character he plays in The Big Bang Theory, but now possessed by the Deity. He delivers the tweets amidst interspersed exposition. Javerbaum has more time to kill with the play, but adds no richness or complexity. Islam is dispatched with a witty one-liner; Jesus is a plot device advancing the not-so-subtle message of the play. And that is this: God is a screwed-up narcissist who gets off on playing high-stakes games with his creation. The play is not much more sophisticated than a freshman essay in a philosophy of religion class. Its God is a reductive caricature that anyone with exposure to Judaism, Islam, or Christianity will recognize.
