Griffin Theatre Presents THE HARVEST Review – Distilling Spiritual Abuse

We find ourselves in a starkly decorated church basement with every detail so perfectly assembled (Set Design: Sotirios Livaditis) that we can also imagine a slight mold or mildew smell. The lights come on the cast in various postures, eyes mainly closed, summoning Christ to their relief in English mumbles becoming a foreign tongue, and building in crescendo in a take two initiated by their apparent leader Ada (Kiayla Ryann) .

If you aren’t creeped out already- and like this writer you probably are—when we see the group leader Ada, who has been eyeing her charges from aside as she sips her once iced drink, lay on her smarmy affect we feel a need to bolt. Yet we stay--- we the audience --living out the same no-chains-visible bondage as these would-be missionaries in Ada’s charge.

This new harvest of missionaries includes an obviously mismatched couple: Denise (Kathryn Acosta) and Marcus (Taylor Del Vecchio); Tom (Collin Quinn Rice), a young man trying to use prayer to cope with his ongoing panic attacks; and recently orphaned Josh (Raphael Diaz), who, unlike his peers doing a 4-month stint, plans to stay forever in the war-torn middle eastern country where they are soon going to spread the gospel.

Josh’s sister Michaela (Paloma Nozicka) has just arrived back in town hell-bent to spare her younger brother from making what she sees as the mistake of his life. That she hadn’t been there during their father’s long alcoholic decline or for his funeral doesn’t lend her pleas for sanity much credibility in Josh’s mind.

Griffin Theatre Mounts Script by MacArthur “Genius”

The back stories of each of these characters are so well-drawn in this script by award-winning playwright Samuel D. Hunter that we can feel like we’ve known them all our lives. For this writer though, the pièce de resistance script gem is when Denise, during an evangelizing play-acting exercise, proffers an argument for atheism suggesting we all just grow up and admit that our lives’ purpose might be more akin to opening a soda can and drinking its contents. This unlikely soda can poetic image bookends the script.

When Chuck (Patrick Blashill), the father of anxiety-ridden Tom and founder of the church makes his entrance we realize that up until now Hunter has been seducing us with brainwashing-lite. Chuck personifies the heavy guns of spiritual abuse, giving all of us a window on how it goes down. (Spoiler Alert!) His short electric scene is by this writer’s lights also the most damning expose of gay conversion therapy one can imagine.

How you feel about The Harvest will no doubt be largely shaped by how much your personal life has brought you into a similar realm of psychological abuse- spiritual or otherwise. Fundamentalists are advised to steer clear.

Production Team: Sotirios Livaditis (scenic design), Mieka van der Ploeg (costume design), Heather Gilbert (lighting design), Sarah Ramos (sound design), Lacie Hexom (properties design), Catherine Allen (production manager), Spenser Diedrick (asst. director) and Jacqueline Marschke (stage manager).

About the Author: Amy Munice

Amy Munice is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher of Picture This Post. She covers books, dance, film, theater, music, museums and travel. Prior to founding Picture This Post, Amy was a freelance writer and global PR specialist for decades—writing and ghostwriting thousands of articles and promotional communications on a wide range of technical and not-so-technical topics.

Amy hopes the magazine’s click-a-picture-to-read-a-vivid-account format will nourish those ever hunting for under-discovered cultural treasures. She especially loves writing articles about travel finds, showcasing works by cultural warriors of a progressive bent, and shining a light on bold, creative strokes by fledgling artists in all genres.

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