2009 Capital Fringe Festival: The Honest-To-God True Story Of The Atheist at The Shop
A play with big questions offers almost no answers
Jennifer Gordon Thomas, Abe Goldfarb, and Daryl Lathon perform in The Atheist
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Is there such thing as a miracle? Does God exist? Is there an afterlife? Dan Trujillo’s The Honest-To-God True Story Of The Atheist poses these questions through a series of satirical scenarios—not that it intends to answer them. Trujillo posits that simply asking may be more entertaining than figuring it all out. It's not, at least when it comes to his confusing, character-shifting play.
The first question of the evening is about faith, albeit faith in the form of a hard-on pill. Trujillo frames it with a salesman pitching Viagra—or possibly Tylenol that just looks like Viagra—to the audience. As an act of good faith, he gives a pill to a volunteer. While waiting for the magic to happen downstairs, the three cast members begin talking about an atheist who's in the news. Thus begins a series of confusing character transformations that makes Trujillo's play difficult to follow—and that's before the mole people show up.
Trujillo uses the atheist both to move the plot along and examine the mysteries of the universe. He's ripe for comeuppance, as a close-minded blogger quick to dismiss believers as fools. Attempting to prove God doesn't exist, he steals, dismembers, and hides pieces of a baby Jesus statue. This leads to a miraculous series of events that ultimately destroys the lives of the atheist and the accessories to his crime against God, and leaves the atheist questioning his own lack of faith.
While Trujillo aims to ask the big questions, True Story has its best moment in what could've been a throwaway scene: a group of subterranean mole people—yes, mole people—discuss how they still believe something exists on the earth's surface, even though they've never seen it. The metaphor couldn't be less subtle, but the accompanying song is one of the performance’s strongest.
Atheist may not reveal any existential answers, but it effectively urges the audience to contemplate an eternity in heaven or the solace of nothingness. Unfortunately, the entertainment value is ultimately trumped by the question of why the audience should even listen if there's no chance of seeing the light.
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