This production gives the illusion of ruminative theater, all the while taking away spiritual peace. While getting caught up in the writing’s emotional reticence and affecting performances (especially Flockhart’s in the second act) viewers are unaware that they will soon hear gruesome stories where religious college students kick a man to death, where a girl kills her teenaged son in the name of revenge, and a salesman, worried that he is about to lose his job, allows his infant to suffocate, thinking he’ll find sympathy from his employers. Whatever the “complex nature of religion and the human psyche,” I found no insight, just a not-so-subtle bashing of religion.

The one connecting string between these storylines is that the characters are members of the Church of Latter-day Saints. This connection between a background in church and their unbalanced view of life never made sense. Are the artists saying that when push comes to shove, religious people behave worse than anyone else? Whenever religion is slandered, I think back to what it must have been like for our Jewish brothers and sisters in early 1930s Germany. They were blamed for the faults of society and their faith was looked at with disgust. Is this same prejudice the fate of Christians in America?