Love the Sinner
Cottesloe, until 10 July
Ditch
Old Vic Tunnels, Waterloo Approach Road, until 26 June
Bickering vicars at the National. A new play by Drew Pautz invites us to consider whether the Church should ordain gay clergypersons. It’s a paradox that an organisation run by men in skirts is so vexed by the prospect of admitting homosexuals to their club. Pautz’s play neatly dramatises this contradiction in the person of Mike, a Protestant lay volunteer, who has a fling with a rent boy while attending a conference in Africa. The rent boy follows Mike home, claims sanctuary in his local church and compels him to help with his asylum claim.
These complications lead to a weighty final scene, which wants to be a psychological tour de force, a grand ethico-political religious skirmish involving Mike, the blackmailer, a top bishop and a Church spin-master.
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