Nothing New in "How to Write a New Book for the Bible"

“The Bible is a story,” Bill Cain tells us in his onstage persona, “a story of a family.”

That may be, but not all family stories are biblical in scope. The rejoinder is obvious, but this earnest meditation on family dynamics amid parental illness, currently on view at Seattle Repertory Theatre, offers limp defenses.

How to Write a New Book for the Bible is an intensely personal work by playwright Bill Cain, and very different from his historical speculations in Equivocation seen here in 2009. Using the diaries he kept while tending his mother Mary in her final year with cancer, Cain places himself and her before us, along with his father and elder brother, altering few facts and changing no names.

It’s a daring bit of scrutiny that few families could withstand, but Cain, while fiercely honest, is never cruel. “Don’t make me look foolish,” Mary cautions him, but she needn’t worry. Linda Gehringer’s portrayal of Mary is absorbing, richly complete, and a spectacular performance. Mary’s sin, if it is one, is to instill in her children a stern Yankee ethic that hard work will be rewarded—and, conversely, that reward’s absence means a failure to work hard. Never a caricature, Gehringer displays a woman of smart independence who bears the know-it-all arrogance of her adult children with wry dignity, even as her failing body and mind force her to rely on them.

Director Kent Nicholson deftly keeps his cast maneuvering steadily through the familiar tensions between mother and adult son. Outwardly they are the trivial differences in taste and preference, but reveal uncomfortable adjustments as a son learns to see his mother as a woman, while she must fall under his caregiving dominion.

As Cain observes, “We are a functional family.” And that becomes clear as see his late father Pete, skillfully played by Leo Marks (last seen in Seattle as the protagonist of All the King’s Men at Intiman). Pete is a self-taught engineer, a thoughtful parent, bedrock of common sense, and a slick dance partner. Arguments occur, but they have rules that avoid serious discord.

Bill’s brother Paul, the suspected favorite, has damage, but he has to leave the family, serving in Vietnam, to acquire it. Aaron Blakely offers some compelling work in Paul’s visit with his brother to the Vietnam memorial, but little is revealed in his part to explain the grudging physical distance he maintains from his parents.

Scenic Designer Scott Bradley provides a minimal, but highly confined space for the actors, suggesting the constraints that family comity demands. With lighting designer Alexander V. Nichols, a suspended arsenal of lamps take turns descending to shine light on the scenes.

Yet it is the playwright that fails to provide much illumination. As a result, Tyler Pierce, playing the author, struggles to convince us that there is something significant about the cleverly written scenes he presents us.

Cain, who is also a Jesuit priest, makes his point evident. There is, he observes, just as much that is holy in the mundane negotiation of family love as in the epic tales of the Old and New Testament. And watching Mary’s decline to death, as well as Bill’s emotional turmoil, is certainly moving.

But the stories of the Bible, as well as its concise parables, have lessons they are designed to teach. Cain seems to have none, admitting as much by acknowledging that stories are often mysteries. The Jesuit writer seems, maddeningly, to fall back on that universal escape-clause from theology’s internal contradictions.

That may excuse God, but never a playwright.

“How to Write a New Book for the Bible” runs at Seattle Repertory Theater’s Bagley Wright Theatre through February 5. Tickets: $15-$64, $12 for under 25; 206-443-2222 / 877-900-9285, or www.seattlerep.org.

Pictured above: Linda Gehringer stars in the world premiere of Bill Cain’s How to Write a New Book for the Bible at Seattle Repertory Theatre. Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com