Let’s start with a quote from Maria Amenabar Farias’ Director’s Notes: “…how many plays have you seen fully set in a bathroom?!” Well here we go! And a pink bathroom at that. A very pink bathroom! Until the wizardry of lighting designer Jason Fassl makes the pink even more intense. And doesn’t it seem since the nearly universal adoption of LED lights, that lighting has even more influence on the movement in a play? Well this season so far, it certainly seems that way. But here at first, we just take it for granted…it’s just a pink bathroom after all…until it becomes something of a pivot point late in the play.
This is a World Premiere Wisconsin presentation and was written by Cara Johnston. Johnston is originally from Dallas Texas (which might prove interesting to our story line? listen and see!) but now resides in Milwaukee and has had a number of plays performed by Renaissance Theaterworks. The playbill places our activity as being from a few years ago, and very late on a Sunday evening. I might quibble with the few years ago, it feels a bit older than that, but then I am not from the cultural setting as are our two characters in the play.
Opening, a very distraught woman rushes into the bathroom wearing a pink as pink can be stylish sheath dress and frantically searches around until she finds the objects of her desire. She writes a check (in a bathroom ? OTOH this is the largest bathroom I have ever seen, with a landline phone, and in a parsonage yet). Then realizing that she has lost her keys, she screams. And in bursts a second woman, swinging her purse like a cudgel, ready to do battle, until she realizes where she is and who she is with. And she is carrying a set of keys and said she rushed in because she heard a scream. She is dressed in lovely and stylish attire, but obviously more casual and comfortable in her approach. She quickly realizes that the lady in pink is the Pastor’s Wife and our knight in shining armor is the Deacon’s Wife.
These ladies know each other on the surface, but they don’t know each other, despite the Deacon’s Wife being a church member for 30 years and the pastor leading the church for the past 20 of those years. But that’s all about to change. We will see that about all that they have in common is the love of their church and the love and respect for their faith. And we don’t actually know their names throughout the play.
RTW offers Great White Throne as a Dark Comedy. It is all that. And a hysterical comedy, but I don’t mean as in belly laughs and guffaws. The humor here is more gentle laughter, sighs of recognition, or gasps of surprise. No, the comedy here often relies on the characters verging on the hysterical.
Libby Amato is the Pastor’s Wife. Amato manages to present a woman at wit’s end who isn’t sure what she should do or where she should go. All she knows is that for the moment is her husband has gotten himself into some legal trouble and her job is to write a check for bail and bring it to the jail. And when the Deacon’s Wife appears, Amato presents a woman torn between duty to husband, maintaining her composure in front of a congregant, and just holding her self together in the moment. Amato’s character is not comfortable in her own skin, now or later in the play.
Marcella Kearns’ Deacon’s Wife, is in fact comfortable in her own skin. And while walking around the neighborhood waiting for her husband who is attending a meeting in the church, she encounters the front door of the parsonage wide open, sees the keys still in the lock, hear’s a scream from inside, and runs to the rescue. Kearns’ shifts from rescuer to Bible quoting healer, as she realizes that the Pastor’s Wife is in crisis despite her denial.
For a while the two women initially stalk each other a bit. But as they start to share a bit of what is going on, and as Amato dramatically explains her distress and her husbands plight, the two women realize that the emergency meeting next door may just determine the pastor’s future and as a result, his wife’s as well. And the walls come tumbling down and real conversation starts, how they got there, and how they feel about it.
Kearns’ is just a live wire even in the role of a new found supportive friend. Her ability to listen and relate and just express the angst and concern for the moment can be exceptionally compelling. And Kearns’ Deacon’s Wife is clearly comfortable in her own skin. Her nearly polar opposite is Amato’s Pastor’s Wife. Amato plays to the hysteria built into the character and clearly expresses a brittle existence but then slowly reaches out for that AHA moment when she realizes that she needs to care for herself. Both women clearly understand the plight of women in their society, each have dealt with it in different ways, ways they thought suited themselves. And in the Pastor’s Wife case, what she thought duty demanded. At times these conversations are uncomfortable and in modern vernacular might be TMI to share with a virtual stranger. It can be difficult to listen to at times even when the dark humor is bubbling there just under the surface.
So yes, the is that AHA moment, but we are never going to be sure exactly what form it finally takes because it ends with a big slam.
Great White Throne runs from now through November 8, 2026 at the home of Renaissance Theaterworks at their theater on South Water St in Milwaukee.
And I don’t envy the props guy or stage staff having to put the set back together each night.
