Good story, good script, good actors, good production, good Lord go see it.

Friends of God is about goodness, and how the good Lord sorely tests his good friends. It deserves a longer review than I have time to give, but I will mention some highlights.

First a complaint. The play is too long, according to my wife and son. Donna has to keep her feet up and can't easily sit so long. Matthew is used to 90 minute movies, and this is double feature length (or meeting block length but with only one intermission). I heard a director say once that Shaxbeard designed his plays to play in about 2 hours, you just need to speak as fast as normal people do and speak over each other, like people do--a matter of pacing. and as absorbing as Friends of God is, it's a little slow-paced.

It is a big story, and there's lots to tell, so Mahonri brings in a Greek chorus, The Voices of History, to narrate and play some roles (the historians as players in history). And they debate each other. Problem: one historian, the most strident and most histrionic, the one with a chip on her shoulder, is also LDS, and because she has the best lines and believes in Joseph Smith as a prophet it's easy to see her as speaking for the author, which suggests the play has a chip on its shoulder. I don't think it does, but if this were an out of town tryout I'd suggest making some changes, something to distance her from the author, or give the other historians some better lines so they don't feel like straw men (maybe one of them could be a non-straw woman).

But I wouldn't change it too much because her edge and passion give the play one of its best moments.

The Voices of History are not only narrators and chorus and actors, moving along and commenting on a complex story, they also represent our efforts to weigh competing versions of a story and figure out how we feel about ethical questions like, should Joseph Smith have suppressed the Nauvoo Expositor--whether or not the suppression was done legally.

The play argues that William Law sets up the Nauvoo Expositor to create a dilemma for Joseph (dilemma, two horns on a vigorously shaking bull's head, if one doesn't gore you the other will). Law proclaims himself an ally of the Warsaw Signal and its calls to drive the Mormons from Illinois, but if Joseph sees the threat to his people and suppresses the paper that will be just fine because it will turn public opinion against him and maybe lead to his death. Joseph chooses the horn that would gore him rather than his people.

Our faithful historian explains to the others that if he had not destroyed the press and suppressed the Expositor Joseph's people would have been slaughtered. "Let them be slaughtered," one replies. She slaps him. Twice. "Those are my people. Those are my ancestors." It's a lovely moment and it resonates far beyond the play. The historian may not be saying that he would have liked those people dead, as much as he's discounting her making an emotional appeal rather than a logical appeal. (There's a similar moment in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion where one character is dismantling an incoherent conception of God and another reminds him to consider who he's talking about.) Those slaps remind us that history is not an abstract set of concepts or actions, it's about people who lived and died and suffered and joyed like we do. (What is that statement about old hair styles--the past tresses aren't dreadlocks, they're not even really past?)

There are some other lovely moments, like when Joseph and Hyrum and John Taylor and Willard Richards are braced against the door in the jail and the mob breaks through and starts shooting then leaves. The door swings shut to show a dazed Willard Richards pushed up against the wall, having seen the fulfillment of Joseph's prophecy that all about him would fall but he would be unscathed.

The scene where the apostles have to tell their wives about polygamy is also lovely, and William Law's final speech, about the memory of some things in Nauvoo being taken from him, is poignant.

The set reminds us of the power of simplicity. The Voices of History sit to the audience's right, the other characters across the stage, in rows like a congregation. A few props define the front half of the stage as whereever the scene takes place. But behind is an upper room with a door, a bed, a window. Carthage Jail looms over the play.

As does Joseph Smith. He is head, and sometimes shoulders, taller than most of the other people onstage. (I don't have the program with me so I can't name names.) The differing heights create some nice visuals, as does the lighting. The choreography (wrestling and some fighting) is also nicely done.

Eric Samuelsen asked for recommendations for BYU's season. I know some at BYU are hesitant about polygamy, so what better place to stage a play whose characters and narrators struggle and debate polygamy, and reflect our own uncertainties and our love of the people who founded and left Nauvoo. (No question mark because I don't want it to sound like a rhetorical question.)

-----------------------------------

Harlow S. Clark (Who wishes he had had more time to write this sooner, but is working 2 jobs just now, and hopes Friends of God has many fine productions. Extended run, anyone?)
January 27, 2006