Sweeney engagingly pulls off solo act
Remember how you were always told to avoid the subject of religion in polite conversation?
Boy, does Julia Sweeney ever violate that commandment in spectacular, entertaining and brilliant fashion.
“Letting Go of God” is Sweeney’s one-woman show about her intellectual journey from her longtime Catholic faith to a state of reluctant, but liberating, non-belief. The show ran for 10 months in Los Angeles, became the most popular story ever on radio’s “This American Life,” and this weekend, it packed The Bing in Sweeney’s hometown.
We’ll discuss Sweeney’s controversial message below, but first I want to tackle this show strictly from a theatrical standpoint. With the giant spectacle of “Aida” in town at the same time, it proved one thing to me: For a riveting show, all you really need is one person with something to say and a gifted way of saying it.
Whether you are inclined to agree with Sweeney theologically or not, it’s obvious that she is talented as a monologist. Yes, the show consists of nothing but Sweeney, standing there talking, yet she fills her story with dead-on imitations of kindly Irish priests, Mormon missionaries, her own mother and Hayley Mills.
“I’ve got the most scathingly brilliant idea!” she said, in perfect Hayley posh.
This show is very funny, which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise since Sweeney is best known for her stint on “Saturday Night Live.” But it is a surprise for the subject matter, which, let’s face it, has high potential to become a boring and bitter anti-religious rant.
Yet Sweeney, as a writer, gets the most important thing right: the tone. Somehow, she is able to take a tough, hard look at hers and millions of others deeply held beliefs and never sound mean, smug or condescending. This is a difficult high-wire act for a writer to pull off, requiring hours of care to pick just the right words, just the right approach.
She does this largely through humor. Her re-telling of the Old Testament tales of Noah and Lot had the largely sympathetic crowd roaring. She pokes fun at Mormons, Buddhists and Deepak Chopra, to name a few.
She also manages to maintain a certain humility in the face of the subject. How can anyone know, really know, what is true spiritually? All she does is explain, with clarity and honesty, her long “knowledge pilgrimage,” as one priest called it, and how that journey looked from the inside of her own head.
It leads her to what most would call atheism, or what she prefers to call naturalism, which makes it, of course, blasphemy to many, many people.
Even before the show opened, I had conversations with readers who were upset about this “atheist” show. The show is controversial by its very existence. Well, clearly, those who believe that Sweeney is right will be most partial to it. Those who believe that faith is exactly that – faith – may not be so partial.
But for most people in the middle, Sweeney’s monologue has value in simply opening a window into the mind of another person, even if that person comes to a different conclusion. Sweeney is exploring deep, powerful feelings, the kind most people are reluctant to expose to the world.
Agree with her or not, she has done something that good art does: Allow us to walk for a while in someone else’s shoes, even if the destination is not necessarily our own.