The Gospel exalts “Oratorio of Living Things” and “Happy Day!”

So why did “Oratorio” make me feel sad at the end? Repetition is a factor of measure and meaning, Christian tells us, and during “Oratorio” I found myself focusing on the small differences between this production and the previous, seemingly identical one from 2022. (For everything there is a season, and perhaps the pandemic, oddly enough, suited “Oratorio.”) Evans again directed the performers to smile frequently, making eye contact with us as they sang. Three years ago, this made them look like fellow churchgoers shaking hands across the pews, but now there has been some shift — perhaps our heightened sense of crisis, perhaps a greater degree of refinement — and this soft kindness can seem a bit cloying. As the show moves from its impressive first hour, the last thirty minutes veer toward the saccharine. “If you’re here, you gotta change,” someone sings, and it sounded to me at that moment more like Sunday school than Sunday service.

Christiane has long been interested in the church clock, and has written several works that celebrate ancient legal clocks, including the exceptional “Terce,” from 2024, which will be performed at 9 a.m., and the streamable “Terce.”prime minister“, which you should listen to at 6 A.M. In keeping with the logic of the Book of Hours, I think the Oratorio should be repeated at regular intervals; Every repetition will inevitably change it again. Even now, I still think about the amazing beginning of the series, which somehow erases my memory of the less satisfying ending. Time moves on without stopping, declares Christiane’s text, her version of good news. “We’re in the middle,” Christian assures us. “We’re not at the end of the episode.”

There’s a whole different kind of faux-church service going on inside “Oh Happy Day!”, a Jordan E. Cooper’s Bible, which is displayed downtown to the public. It’s a frustrating but at times beautiful production, directed by Stevie Walker Webb, that functions as a kind of devotion to the individual—a simultaneous baptism, an extravagant return, and an apotheosis of Cooper himself.

The playwright and actor, who was nominated for a Tony for “Ain’t No Mo” two seasons ago, plays Keyshawn, a man who returns home under duress: in fact, he has recently died, but his soul must complete a task before he can go to his reward. Thrown onto the streets as a teenager, long ignored by his homophobic father (Brian D. Coates), and estranged from his sister Nessie (Tameka Lawrence) and her son Kevin (Donovan Lewis Bazemore), Kishon is divinely commanded to somehow save them all from the flood (capital F implied), which is about to sweep away their neighborhood in Laurel, Mississippi. Kishon is of course angry that God wants him to put aside his legitimate resentment in order to save his family. Why didn’t his father come looking for him, especially when he learned that Kishon had turned to sex work to survive? But God, who appears in the form of each of the different members of the Kishon family, will not hear “no” for an answer.

The show narrates three angelic “goddesses” (Tiffany Mann, Shelia Melody MacDonald, and Latrice Pace), dressed in shimmering violet evening dresses. (Queen Jane designed the costumes, some of which light up hilariously.) The Divine Float lifts Keyshawn’s mood by singing several new works by gospel composer Donald Lawrence, who cleverly incorporates the language of theatrical performance into his lyrics. “If you want to change what you see…reset!” The Divines sing, as bright as the trumpets in Jericho, while Keyshawn rearranges stage props—say, the chair he just threw across the yard—to attempt a certain family reunion once again. The play also repeats its gestures, sometimes wearily: Kishon continually lashes out against his family’s cruelty, and is then chastened by a vision of God. The goal is Keyshawn’s eventual tearful breakdown. Fortunately, singing is there to carry the rest of us up, up, up.

It is striking that there is suddenly so much theatrical but church-made material this fall. New York Theater Workshop recently produced “Saturday Church,” a Sia musical that has a bizarre ballroom version of the service, with J. Harrison Ghee presiding as Black Jesus and dancers regularly tearing off choir robes; Playwrights Horizons has premiered Jane Tullock’s solo play No One Can Take You from the Hand of God, about a woman who leaves her abusive religious upbringing to admit she feels homesick for her faith. And in Ars Nova, flamboyant “Pastor’s Son” writer and performer Brandon Kyle Goodman serves as a delightful preacher and sex educator (imagine a cardigan-wearing Mister Rogers and Fetish gear) in the sex-positive “Church of Heaux.” Their gospel includes delightful educational interludes by dolls’ genitals – the floppy purple penis suffers from feelings of shame – and lots of group sharing, including some hands-on instruction with glazed cakes.

You can’t swing a censer in this city now without hitting someone who, even though he was brought up in the Christian church, doesn’t feel at home in service as it is now. It is no coincidence that many of the projects are bizarre reclamations of their structures and decorations. Everyone finds value in their musical traditions. (Joy’s voice may sound like another voice.) It is clear that we are in a time of desperate spiritual searching, and it is noteworthy that many have found answers within the theater. In “Oh Happy Day!”, Keyshawn can’t understand where he’s going to get the materials for the ship until he notices how easy it is to dismantle his father’s house. In front of him is the wood of the new construction. He just needs to tear down the old place and build something new. ♦