INTERVIEW: In new play, ‘God Shows Up’ to check in with humanity
Photo: God Shows Up, written by Peter Filichia, stars, from left, Lou Liberatore and Christopher Sutton. Photo courtesy of Andy Evan Cohen / Provided by Richard Hillman PR with permission.
Peter Filichia has built a career out of commentary and critique in the theater world, bringing his reviews to readers in The Star-Ledger, TheaterWeek and a host of other publications. Theater books to his name? Yep, he’s got those, too.
Over the years, he has also dabbled in playwrighting himself, having written a short play about bullying, a full-length play called Adam’s Gifts and a 10-minute play called Our Dead Classmate. Now he’s ready to add to this part of his résumé with the new comedy-drama God Shows Up, which plays through Feb. 21 at the Playroom Theater in Midtown Manhattan.
The show, featuring Maggie Bofill, Lou Liberatore and Christopher Sutton, is a rumination on religion and its many practitioners. It posits the question: What would happen if God came down to earth and checked in with humanity?
The work came to Filichia after an initial prompt from producer Eric Krebs.
“Every year I emcee and write a ceremony called the Theatre World Awards,” Filichia said in a recent phone interview. “These awards started in 1945, and since then, they’ve had three leaders. I’ve been in charge since I think ’96, and so we give out prizes to people who are making Broadway or off-Broadway debuts. Anyway, Eric Krebs, who is an off-Broadway producer, came to the event in 2017, and the next day he called me and said, ‘Listen, I like your sense of humor. I think you’re very funny.’”
That conversation began a multi-year collaboration. Filichia and Krebs had known each other previously because they operated in similar circles in New Jersey. Filichia was writing reviews for a New Jersey paper, and, in 1974, Krebs founded the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Their paths didn’t always cross, but they knew of each other.
“So I had known Eric, but this was the first time he had really had a chance to see my sense of humor for any length of time,” Filichia said of that night at the Theatre World Awards. “And he responded to it, so he said, ‘I’ve got this idea, and I’ve always been looking for somebody to write it. And I think you might be the person, so the point would be that God would come down to earth. And he would certainly make an assessment of what was going on on earth — the fact that he’d be disappointed in some things and pleased with others.’ I said, ‘OK, that sounds great to me because I certainly have a lot of opinions about people today and how they view religious matters.’”
Filichia took the idea and started to put pen to paper. What he devised was admittedly different than Krebs’ original idea, but the resulting play has offered a topical viewpoint on how and why people believe.
“I think we have people who default to religion to make decisions for them and all that, so that appealed to me,” he said. “And I came up with the idea of having [God] visit an Evangelist’s talk show and talk to the Evangelist about what he feels the Evangelist is doing, so little by little, the layers get peeled away. And we see what the Evangelist is all about. There’s a big surprise there, too.”
Filichia has appreciated his working relationship with Krebs, especially how much latitude the producer afforded him in constructing the play. The playwright reported that Krebs went for the ride tremendously and has been supportive all along the way.
“I really do believe that he saw a much darker play, even though he said he liked my sense of humor, but he really went with it,” Filichia said. “Every time I said, ‘Here’s my new idea,’ he really responded. There were times he said to me, ‘Hey, how about X, Y and Z, putting in those things?’ I’d say, ‘No, Eric, that doesn’t work because of A, B and C.’ And he’d be very good about it. He’s been an astonishing producer in that way, that he has really given me creative control.”
The play, like most shows, has gone through many revisions, especially when director Christopher Scott and the ensemble had their hands on it. The modifications, Filichia said, have only improved and fine-tuned the material.
“Sheldon Harnick, who wrote Fiddler on the Roof and many other shows, said that people think that when you’re out of town with a show and you have to come up with a new song that it’s really tremendously hard,” Filichia said. “He says it’s a little bit easier because you’ve been seeing the people do the songs that they’ve had, and you know what their strengths are and what they can do. So as a result, yes, I’ve done a ton of rewriting based on the fact that I’ve seen what these people can do, and they really are terrific. It’s amazing to me how wonderful they are.”
Defining the genre of the piece has been a bit of a challenge for the creative team. On its surface, having God descend to earth and sit in on a televangelist’s talk show is a setup for a comedy, similar to David Javerbaum’s An Act of God, which played Broadway recently. However, the material becomes more dramatic as the characters are taken more seriously.
“We’ve added a lot of things that have made it more pungent in the dramatic field, but, yeah, it’s one of those plays where you think it’s a comedy,” the playwright said. “And suddenly more dramatic things happen than you might have suspected.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
God Shows Up, written by Peter Filichia, plays through Feb. 21 at the Playroom Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
