"thought provoking, honest..."

Barrington Stage Company, at the Consolati Performing Arts Center in Sheffield, presents the world premier of The God Committee by Playwright Mark St. Germain (who also authored last years Ears on the Beetle) through August 7.

A loud and threatening crash with the sounds of heartbeats shatters the darkness of the theater before the opening scene. The play starts slowly as the members of a committee come together in a meeting room to choose a recipient of a heart available for transplant.

As the lights go up, the set of a boardroom at Saint Patrick’s Hospital in NYC, with its paneled walls, padded chairs and paintings of important people associated with the hospital, adorn the walls. Large glass panels form a background that connects to the world beyond.

A large white bulletin board to the rear breaks, into three categories, potential heart transplant patients: Status One, Status 2 and New Admissions. It is a cold and frightening listing.

Nurse Nella Redwood (Michele Shay) readies the room for the committee who enter one by one, doctors, a priest, a psychiatrist, a mixture with different experiences, biases and needs.

Alex Gorman, surgeon, (Armand Schultz) enters in a black suit, then Dr. Keira Bank (Kathy Hutchinson) in green scrubs. Schultz carries an antagonistic, arrogant attitude while Bank, the young woman, seems ready to learn. Father Dunbar (Geritt Graham), not a member of the board but there by invitation of another member, admits to his career as a lawyer before he entered the priesthood.

Irish Band Music filters in from outside setting the tone of the a St. Patrick’s Day Parade passing by and tying up traffic. With the committee finally assembled to narrow the choices the differences become obvious. Redwood champions a black man, others defend reasons why each candidate should receive the heart. Ann Russ, (Amy Van Nostrand), the somewhat removed psychiatrist, says she won’t vote.

An unexpected offer to donate 30 million dollars to the hospital if the heart goes to a certain patient causes friction as the committee debates the reasons why each candidate deserves the heart.

The pace and intensity of the dialogue increases as the discourse continues.

The cast plays a range of characters defining each member’s views. Gorman realizes the somewhat arrogant portrayal of the surgeon who thinks he knows more than the others and often denigrates their reasons for backing one or another patient.

Life goes on outside beyond the board room as inside lives hang in limbo. The loud speaker informs employees and visitors about the mundane offerings the hospital sponsors as a way to offset the grimness of what goes on in reality. That day a program on making Irish soda bread takes place, the following day, A Learn to Tango opportunity.

Dr. Klee (David Rasche) tries to keep the committee focused but as each character suffers through the process of choosing a heart recipient, their failings, biases and the way they affect their decisions surfaces, as do their humane leanings.

Nurse Redwood’s common sense adds a level of medical expertise as important as a doctor’s, but more compassionate. Dominick Piero, well played Ron Orbach, confined to a wheelchair but vocal about almost everything, suddenly finds his jokes inadequate.

Director David Saint brings the tension to an almost unbearable point as the committee continues to argue, going back and forth between prospective patients, most holding to their initial choices as time shortens for the choice to meet the deadline of the available heard.

Costumes by David Murin, ordinary clothes still define each individual from Gorman’s dark suit to Father Dumbar’s perfect clerical attire to Ross’s plain aloof business like suit. Eric Renschier created the perfect boardroom, simple but not eexcessive.

Morality flounders but overcomes individual lapses in this thought provoking, honest attempt to find a joint resolution that leaves lives forever changed.