Heroes of the Fourth Turning, the title of this drama about a head-on collision of conservative Catholicism with partisan polemics, refers to a theory that wild swings between left-wing and right-wing politics can be predicted on a multigenerational scale.
While not a Catholic, I am a Baby Boomer of a left-leaning, if not radical, era in our nation’s history. Many of my 1960s coming-of-age cohorts could not imagine a MAGA mania sweep.
Four seven-year alums of playwright Will Arbery’s fictional Transfiguration College in Wyoming have gathered at a fellow student’s home to celebrate the promotion of a mentor from their undergraduate days to the presidency of their alma mater.
That’s where we meet Justin, played by Jah’Kai Hall, a refreshing choice in counterintuitive casting by director Luci Thomas. He’s the host in his home where, before any guests arrive, he shoots a deer, which he drags across a backyard set with subtle lighting designed by E. T. Wilford for a starry-night reunion.
The timing of the premiere of Arbery’s drama was no accident, as it followed news of the 2017 murder of Heather Heyer at a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The first guest to arrive is Teresa, dressed as you might have pictured Ann Coulter when she was dating, of all people, acerbically progressive comic Bill Maher. It is a spot-on costume selection by director Thomas.
We soon learn that Teresa, played with in-your-face stridency by Megan Bradley, compares all pregnant women who choose abortion to murderers of the same moral stripe as Nazi executioners. She also excuses racist rants by Trump acolyte Stephen Bannon as the political pot starts to simmer in Act I.
Teresa’s excuse for supporting white supremacy is that Western civilization will be wiped out by other minority races that procreate more fluently. She argues in support of her theory that white people are disenfranchised by “original sin guilt,” meaning slavery, which invites such political responses as “affirmative admission” and “diversity.”
So you get the political drift here. Two others who are fellow alums compete for attention through the racist and sexist leanings of their undergraduate indoctrination against abortion, LGBT inclinations and, God forbid, transgender identity.
While Teresa complains loudly that white guilt prevents fair debate, she gets an earful from classmate Emily, daughter of the beloved mentor we meet in Act II. As viscerally played by Katelyn Masden, Emily debates her heart out that abortion by women who are raped or degraded by men, or ignored by “The System,” cannot be condemned in the same moral syllabus as mass-genocidal Nazis.
While rape and abortion do not apply to Kevin, one of the first guests to arrive, he is severely afflicted by the moral curriculum that condemns premarital intercourse. He’s never had a girlfriend, now seven years after his four-year college graduation. No wonder he’s brought along a magnum of whiskey.
As played by Zach Bozman as a more-or-less healthy adult male, Kevin is tormented by his overripe virginity, even as he shares his booze with flirty Teresa, who we learn has her own set of sexual afflictions. As convincingly revealed by Bradley, she’s terrified of motherhood.
Finally, we meet the woman of honor, Emily’s mom, Gina, played with wise-ass confidence by Mary Ann Emerson, who finds excuses for why she voted for Donald Trump. On the calendar in which this play was written, that would be in 2016.
While dissolute Kevin says he vomited after voting for Trump, perhaps because he had too much to drink then, too, Gina, their mentor, says she went to confession afterward, as if committing a sin against humanity. Only her priest knows for sure.
It’s odd that, with all the political and racial elements, Justin, the African American among the four student “heroes,” has little to say in protest. Hall was supplied with few such lines by playwright Arbery.
But he does play a role in the major sound-effect warning that may make you think for a second that you need to abandon the Avalon. Never mind. It’s just part of the drama, which, I should add, includes a stream of foul language, especially in the closing soliloquy.
So as not to spoil it, we won’t say what was said. Just know that it’s a four-letter “Fourth Turning” spiel Shakespeare would never pen.
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Groove Factory, a Center for Stagecraft, presents a play by Will Arbery.
Performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Aug. 6 through 8, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9, at the Avalon Theatre in Easton.
