The Rapture Project

Susan Sontag battles Beelzebub in Great Small Works’ latest puppet extravaganza, The Rapture Project at HERE. The famed author and human rights activist, who died in 2004, is seen here as a “guardian angel to all in dire straits,” and is just one of several characters in this earnest, yet imperfectly realized satire about religious fundamentalism and the raging political conflicts in the Middle East.

The work is created and performed by company members John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, and Jenny Romaine, and features additional performers Shane Baker, Andrea Lomanto, Jessica Lorence, and composer Jessica Lurie. All eight enter at the top of the show, decked out in comically eccentric black and white costumes, complete with wacky headdresses, and perform a bizarre musical number (some of the cast also play a few instrumental tunes outside of the theater prior to the show).

Bell serves as narrator, providing historical (and Biblical) background on the Rapture as well as occasional melodramatic commentary on what’s going on in the puppet scenes. In addition to the aforementioned Sontag and Beelzebub, we meet the other primary players in the puppet pageant: Rick, a Christian missionary, and his fiancé Carrie; Rabeya, a punk, feminist Muslim woman and intellectual from Buffalo; Bernard, the CEO of a body armor business that sold defective parts to the U.S. military; Wanda, a former employee of Bernard’s who vows not only to expose his lies but to kill him as well; and a typical white American family, with mom, dad, son, and daughter. There’s also a guy in a Security jacket (maybe several guys played by the same puppet, but with different nametags) who is lifted up to Heaven as part of the Rapture. All of them converge in the Holy Land for a grand finale that is as violent as it is ridiculous. The depiction of the End Times is certainly bleak, but funny as well.

Certain moments within the show are staged with marvelous ingenuity. My favorite is when the Antichrist walks through Brooklyn, and the curtain on the puppet stage is lowered just enough to show an actor’s feet in black shoes move slowly across. The top of the stage is also revealed upon occasion to reveal the naked upper bodies of the puppeteers holding the strings of those below, and talking to them or to each other as if they were the gods themselves, or at least archangels.

Lurie provides an ever-evolving musical soundscape, recording and playing back beats and adding a couple of sax solos. Many of the other cast members are also talented musicians and pepper the show with their lively contributions.

The Rapture Project pokes fun at all types of fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Unfortunately, the script is not as clever as it could be, with much of the dialogue seeming stilted. The work also suffers from choppy pacing. In the end, the performance is more admirable for the ideas behind it and the creativity with which it is staged than it is actually enjoyed.