Anton Goes To Heaven (?)

By: Darryl Reilly

“The women are all whores, and the men are all pussies, I can’t even go and have a beer with a man!” So, rants the drunk and profane anti-hero of playwright Stefan Diethelm’s exhilarating Anton Goes To Heaven (?). It is a wild sly take on Jean-Paul Sartre’s classic existential play, No Exit. Hell is other people here too. Mr. Diethelm spins out his mordant, clever and well plotted premise through witty often hilarious dialogue spoken by his quartet of richly delineated mostly underclass characters. It’s all a tartly contemporary spin on Leo Tolstoy’s belief that, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“The only guy who tells it like it is! I’d follow him anywhere” is the unemployed and disaffected Anton’s reaction to the bulletin of Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News which he discovers while channel surfing alone in his living room when the play begins. Anton drinks beer after beer during his freewheeling MAGA-style tirade which is also laden with personal excoriation. This bleak aria of self-loathing culminates with him shooting himself in the head to end the pain. Alas, he awakes in purgatory; he is so combative with the sunny guide explaining the otherworldly setup, that he is punished by the arrival of his tormenting mother and grandfather who are both pillars of white trash. If Anton successfully endures reliving his dysfunctional past he will go to heaven, if not he will go to hell.

The tall, lean and scruffy, Chris Cornwell delivers a colossal performance out of Sam Shepard as Anton. Mr. Cornwell’s twangy speech pattern, lithe and sensuous physicality, and haunted mien while wearing jeans and a baseball cap, all endow his forceful characterization with authenticity and poignancy; abrasiveness and anguish are fully embraced.

As the leather biker jacketed, Lotto-fixated and hard drinking single mother, Cynthia Levin is a ferocious delight. Ms. Levin offers a grandly wicked portrait of self-justified maternal abuse via her gutsy turn. Playing the perverse wheelchair-bound W.W.II veteran grandfather, who is reminiscent of a verbose Kurt Vonnegut-type figure, is the beaming, animated and old-time New York City gruff-voiced Kevin Duffy. Mr. Duffy unabashedly, gleefully and repeatedly goes low for plentiful laughs; his humping of a pillow gets a lot of raucous mileage. Veering from marvelously daffy to serenely dramatic as “Id”, the purgatory greeter, is the luminous Amari Flynn. With precise emotionalism, Ms. Flynn’s initial joyous stateliness evolves into strategic malevolence due to the piece’s trajectory.

Director Andy Reiff orchestrates these gem performances while physically staging the play with visual impact and narrative momentum by kinetic movement and charged pacing. The solo opening preamble is a show unto itself due to Reiff’s accomplished command of presentation; the rest of the production is equally as entrancing. Their everyday costume design is pointedly artful. Fight choreographer Abby Messina’s breathtaking punches and slaps contribute to the dimension of realistic familiar violence. Ren Orth’s simple, yet detailed living room scenic design smoothly morphs from drab squalor to gleaming white ethereality. Lighting designer Avery Sedlacek’s queasy dimness and pristine bright rays are integral. Christopher Bello’s expert sound further enforces the production’s eerie theatricality; a buzzing fly’s strident tones become totemic. At the performance under review due to technical issues, Mr. Bello’s projection design was not utilized.

Anton Goes To Heaven (?) is a wry, thoughtful and grandiose fantasia of present-day American heartland despair.

Anton Goes To Heaven (?) (through October 6, 2024)
Theater for The New City, 155 First Avenue, in Manhattan
For tickets, visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission