The Faith Machine: BIG, BOLD, and LONG

Dear Bitches,

Don’t we like ‘em big, bold, and long?  So let's laud Alexi Kaye Campbell for his play The Faith Machine, and the Royal Court Theatre for commissioning it, as that’s exactly what The Faith Machine delivers.

BIG – as in asking the big questions of our day.  The play's actions swings between Greece and New York, but intellectually, it is set on the crossroad of Faith and the Free Market, where stands the court of human conscience.

The play opens in the sleek Manhattan apartment of Tom, an ad executive about to take on Fletcher, a pharmaceutical firm that will be his biggest account yet.  Sophie, his fiancé and an idealistic Englishwoman, is forcing him to make a moral choice:  drop the Fletcher account, which has caused death and grievous harm to the children of Uganda by its experimentation on them, or she walks out of his life.  Tom pleads for her to be realistic about the world they live in.  He reasons that things don’t change overnight, and that the ad job is only until they feel financially secure.

Sophie:  “But the question it’s leading to, the essential question to which I need to know the answer, Tom,…is ‘Who are you?’”

In the next scene, we are transported back to three years earlier in Greece.  Here we are introduced to Sophie’s father, Edward, an Anglican bishop who had just left the church over its inflexible attitude to homosexuality.  Patrick, a Kenyan cleric and friend, is visiting to persuade him not to quit by defending the church’s stance.  Here, we are treated to an engaging debate where both sides of the issue are argued with equal vigour.  The exchange leads one to question, just what is the role of the church?  Is it to act as a moral beacon (and therefore must assume absolute moral superiority), or is it, together with its flock, to discover Truth?

Patrick:  “You fail to understand what we need for the Church to survive is for moderation and gradualism.  If in Africa we follow your ways, within a few years the Anglican Church would be dead and Islam would reign supreme.  And where would that leave the gays, I wonder?”

See what I mean by BIG and BOLD? And that’s just the first act!

The play is LONG, too, clocking in at almost three hours. Normally, I don’t mind long as long as it keeps me engaged and the plot stays focused.  This one did keep me engaged throughout, but it meanders a bit.  I felt Act 2 Scene 2 was not essential to the play.  I brought this up with the playwright during the post-show talk and he knew what I meant.  He agreed that the particular scene dropped the pace dramatically, but different people may take different things from it.

The acting is superb as one can expect from a Royal Court Theatre production.  I especially like Kyle Soller as Tom and Ian McDiarmid as Edward.  The direction is dynamic.  The largeness of the play’s ambition is the star, however.  I suspect many came out of this play asking: in that crossroad where Faith and Free Market meets, where stands the court of human conscience, how much compromise can one make before the spirit is condemned to rot?


Until then, sweet-tarts. Kisses.

Hollie Go-Lightly