“In Quietness,” the title of Anna Ouyang Moench’s odd, perplexing and intriguing exploration of marriage and organized religion, refers to the Biblical teaching that women must submit to their husbands in all things (Ephesians 5:22) and find strength “in quietness” (Isaiah, 30:15).
Those instructions are taken to heart in the Fort Worth Southern Baptist seminary where Moench sets the bulk of the darkly comic drama running through March 3 at A Red Orchid Theatre.
Director dado’s acute ear for finding humanity in absurdity is invaluable here, as she sends audiences down a twisted vortex where gender roles and relationships are governed by the Bible, as it is interpreted by an insular, seemingly isolated clan of Southern Baptists.
“In Quietness” opens in disorienting half-light, the only sound being that of a hospital monitor beeping out somebody’s fading vitals. Paul (Joe Edward Metcalfe) sits in a small pool of light, talking of his love for the off-stage, unresponsive woman.
Cut to Paul back at home, where we meet his exhausted wife Max (Brittany Burch), a high-flying business executive with a salary that lets Paul be a stay-at-home husband. As Paul confesses to his increasingly gobsmacked wife, he’s had an affair with a woman in his Bible studies class. It only ended because she died unexpectedly. He’s been at the hospital. He’s devastated.
With virtually no exposition, the couple moves to Fort Worth so Paul can attend seminary school. Max quits her job to live in a women’s dorm where the wives and fiancées of the seminarians will be responsible for cooking and cleaning for the community. Their world, as explained by the seminary’s head housekeeper Terri (Kirsten Fitzgerald), is one of eternal subservience and properly folded, fitted sheets.
On paper, it sounds a bit like the world of Margaret Atwood’s prescient novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”: The women are sequestered and ordered into obedience and domesticity, while the men are free to study scripture and grieve their dead Bible study mistresses. But where Atwood’s iconic dystopian novel was grim and horrifying, “In Quietness” is rife with humor, albeit humor that’s as surreal as a giant pillar of salt suddenly showing up on the road out of Gomorrah.
“That’s insane,” Max declares when her chirpy new roommate Beth (Alexandra Chopson) explains that she isn’t on birth control because the Lord alone decides when women can have children. “That’s faith,” Beth responds. Throughout “In Quietness,” the line between the two is profoundly blurred.
Paul’s something of a cipher here — he’s a vessel for grief and not much more. The play belongs to Beth, Max and Terri, a trio defined by vivid, layered intensity.
Moench doesn’t provide even a faint outline unpacking why Max would consent to such a drastic lifestyle change. But Burch makes that change interesting, creating a character who fascinates and confounds. Max lacks the blinkered religious fervor of the others, but she’s willing to go along with it, even if it means tackling totally alien tasks like opening the valve on a spray bottle of window cleaner.
Fitzgerald has a six-star-general’s command of any given scene she’s in, whether she’s doling out advice on tablescapes or God. Terri also has authored a book, and refers to it with the authority of a ship’s prow, plowing straight-on through roiling swells. Turn to Chapter 4, she instructs Beth and Max. There, they will learn how to structure a “godly social life.”
Beth, fianceé to the ever-lurking Dusty (Adam Shalzi, all skeevy possessiveness), is all-in on the submission with one exception that can best be described as profoundly hypocritical. Chopson plays the dichotomy to subtle comic effect.
Grant Sabin’s minimalist set moves with tidy efficiency from Max and Paul’s apartment to the dorm room where Beth and Max are charged with preparing for all the newcomers Terri insists will be arriving shortly.
Kotryna Hilko’s subtle, effective costume design begins with Max in finely fitted, silky shirts that signal stealth wealth, while Beth is pure cottagecore homemaker from start to finish. Terri’s boxy, pastel pants suits signify her authority, something that’s an intriguing paradox given her allegiance to feminine submission.
“In Quietness” is classic A Red Orchid fare. Things aren’t explained so much as explored on a stage filled with characters who’ll keep you thinking about their world long after the final blackout.
