Bryan and Kevin sharing a bottle of whiskey on the couch, occasionally listening to the baby monitor, was not expected. Kevin has two master’s degrees and his father is a lawyer; Bryan has worked in a factory all his life, his parents were addicts and he is not well off.
Their lives and characters could hardly be more different. But Kevin is a mortgage advisor and Bryan wants to buy a piece of land, so one day one sits at the other’s desk.
The men started talking at their daughters’ daycare. Gradually it turns out that they share more: they both try, against odds, to be good fathers and struggle with things that are bigger than themselves, with institutions such as banks or a foster care institution.
Bryan has little knowledge of the financial system in which Kevin specializes. When he receives yet another rejection from a bank, he wants to call them and send a photo of him and his daughter. “That they see that I am just a neat boy.” It doesn’t work that way, Kevin knows. “They are not interested in who you are as a person. They only care about the numbers.” But the mortgage advisor also struggles with ‘the system’. He could lose his foster daughter and have no influence on that whatsoever.
A case for the existence of God is an unadorned performance, in which the focus is entirely on actors Emmanuel Ohene Boafo (who plays Kevin) and Bram Suijker (Bryan). As a result, full attention is also paid to the beautifully constructed text by playwright Samuel D. Hunter (also author of The Whale, the play that was successfully adapted into a film in 2022). In a nutshell shows A case for the existence of God the vulnerable person, powerless in the light of what is bigger than us and of the life that happens to us.
Director Erik Whien has opted for a particularly sober staging. The players sit next to each other on a white beam in the middle of the stage for almost the entire performance. The scenes, in which we jump chronologically through their encounters, follow each other quietly. The actors move and suddenly the situation is different: they are processing something intense or laughing loudly. This creates a close friendship, but one that has to be fought for. They are not self-evident comrades; their differences cause misunderstandings and clashes, moments when their bond seems to crumble and the distance becomes unbridgeable. In times of social division, we could take this as an example, because despite the explosive clashes, the men never really turn away from each other.
On the edge of the playground
Actor Bram Suijker is breathtaking as the restless Bryan, with his ideas fluctuating from naive to confused or philosophical. He nervously strokes his wild hair, moves uncomfortably, looks away and then goes back to being intensely involved in conversation. It is touching how he continues to believe that tomorrow will be better than today, while little in his life has shown this so far.
Also read
the Culture Diary of Actor Emmanuel Ohene Boafo: ‘It felt good. But did it come across?’