iTunes Exclusive Episode The Christians

Greetings, Empire member and or members. If you are hearing the sound of my voice, it means the following conditions have been met. At least once in your life, you have listened to the clubhouse podcast live every Sunday, night, seven, Eastern, four Pacific, your one-stop shop for all things pop culture.

It also means you subscribe to this show on your favorite podcasting app because it's time for another atone's exclusive. Greetings. This is the 259th one of these things as we continue the streak.

My name is Rob, I am the executive producer of the clubhouse podcast and it's very well documented that I'm a man of faith and that's going to play in a role in this particular episode. But I am not by myself because I rarely am when we do these things. Joining me across the desk as he tends to do is the official fact checker of this show and a man that knows you've got to have faith, faith, faith.

You may know him as fond on go, but his mom and even don Ford, I'm going to calm down for it. I was anti-wam as a kid. That makes me sad for you.

That makes me sad for you. They were just a two version of Justin Bieber of the day. If it gets you through the night, I guess.

Whenever we do one of these, it is to review something this particular episode is no exception. Kind of a little bit of a different off-the-beaten path for us in this particular episode because we went to a brand new place that we've never been before. Especially here in Dallas, the Kalita Humphrey's theater, beautiful facility where we've got to see a production of the Christians.

Now before we start this whole day, yes sir. We have to think that great friend of ours, Kaylee Manson. We love her to death.

So we're closer and also the Humphrey's through the end, right? Also as part of the AT&T performing arts center as well. Lot going on.

We're going to dive right in. This actually plays at the Kalita with a call that the Kalita. Okay.

Through February the 19th. So if you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area, put that in your frame of reference. Here is what you need to know.

The entire set is the front of the front of a church. Do you call that the pulpit? No, the pulpit is where the pastor actually stands to give this sermon.

I just call it the front of the church because you have the altar there. You have the pulpit there. You have the choir all there and everything else.

Let's just start by saying as far as that's concerned, wow, beautiful, gorgeous set. Well, I mean, constructed down to the the worn in cushions where the choir sits. And there is a full choir here.

Yes sir. And this choir is comprised of volunteers from all over the Dallas Fort Worth area. So it was a real choir.

Yeah. It was kind of nice. They had the robes on and everything.

But once that's it, there's no prop changes, no nothing, just like the front of a church. And they kind of move some of the chairs around a little bit to signify different places. And a very interesting storyteller style where like the main character would say, and then she said, or and then I said, just to kind of keep things moving a little bit.

But let's talk about Pastor Paul played by Chambley Ferguson. He is the pastor of what could be known as a mega church. Yep, or started very, very small, 20, 30 people and now they're up over 3,000.

And they had to move locations. Yeah, they had to build a brand new facility from the ground up, which on this particular day when the production takes place is the day that they celebrate paying off their mortgage. And he begins to preach a sermon.

And it's a sermon that rocks the foundation of his church to the point where his associate pastor Joshua played by Stephen Michael Walters disagrees with him publicly. He has also to deal with the fallout of this sermon, not only with his fellow pastors, but with his board, held it, headed by Elder J played by Tyre's Allen, his wife, Elizabeth played by Christina Clark, and there's also someone from the congregation, Jenny, who gets involved played by Lindsay Ryan. I don't really want to go too deep into the subject matter because when this was explained to me from the wonderful website at theatpack.org.

That's our website. It is. Well, plates are.

They didn't explain it. So going in, and as I said at the top of this episode, I am a man of faith. I haven't been involved in ministry for many, many years.

I was a little apprehensive, but I read some of the reviews on this particular production and people were saying that it's healthy, it's good for people of all faiths. You don't have to have a particular belief system. So I was like, okay, let me just say it.

He brings up something and says something which makes sense, I think. But it goes being the pastor, the subject matter, the spoiler free, let me just say the spoiler free. He says something that makes some good examples.

And what he says goes against kind of the norm of Christianity on some, absolutely. Absolutely. He makes an argument that's very intelligible of why he might, well, whatever, that makes the story kind of makes sense.

So what, how does it go? And it's presented from both sides. It's not a one-sided story.

Yes. There are many different angles looked at from this, which I really like. And with a cast, a main cast of only five people.

That's it. There's only in a choir. All five of those people approach this subject matter from different places, which gives you a really rounded discussion of the subject matter at hand.

We've already talked about how great the set looks. This runs about 90 minutes, no intermission, just no intermission at a breakneck pace. Watch meter 35 minutes, really.

We were a third of the way done the first time I looked at my watch. And I'll say this if you go to my written video, www.cobasplicasque.com. That is our website.

put on there that this the subject matter does not go to take a jab across the candidate. Not at all. It's a open debate that if now the subject of what the guy says may offend somebody but he makes it get argument about it.

They both make great argument. Yes, humble sights. And again, as a man of faith, this did not offend me in any way, shape or form granted.

It's a little harder to offend me than it is to offend a most people of my ilk because I like to think that I'm a fairly open minded individual. But I thought this, again, I found this discussion very, very healthy, very well thought out, very logical. Now, no matter how good a script is and Lucas Hennath and I hope you set his last name correctly, that script is strong.

Yeah, it's very well written. It's very well thought out. It's very well paced, but you can have the best script in the world.

But if you don't have a cast that can carry it, it's never going to fly. This cast carries it on every level, especially the league for a chambly Ferguson. When he starts to preach, he is the embodiment of the modern mega church style preacher without like there's some mega church preachers that I see.

I'm kind of like, you're kind of slimy, you know what I mean? Yeah, but not him. He preaches it from a standpoint of a pastor who is very passionate about what he feels.

He has very strong convictions. There is the question right, there's a couple of question raised in this about the nature of his sermon. But when he's approached about it, there's no indication of anything underhanded.

You more see him as trying to explain himself without it, by not expecting to have to explain himself. Does that make sense? Yes.

So the way he portrays it, where it's kind of like, I didn't think I'd have to talk about this. So I have to figure out how to articulate it versus I never got the feeling where he was like trying to tap dance around anything, which I thought was really interesting way. He did it very, very well.

I thought that Walters plays very well off of him and something that I put in my written review conveniently located at www dot the clubhouse podcast.com. Correct. They talked about this in stalade.

Now I want to talk about stalade here in just a minute, but they made a conscious choice because you could have played his character with the associate pastor. You could have played Joshua as an antagonist as the bad guy, but they made a conscious choice to play it more as two brothers trying to have a discussion but not being able to understand the other. So there was never a feeling of good guy, bad guy.

It was more a feeling of just two guys, which I thought was a very conscious choice and a very, very wise choice and it was executed very well. And I'm the acting, Ferguson. He carries about 90% of the speech.

He does. He does. He, he, this character, if you follow the script from the, from the original script or whatever, whoever has this part has a big load to carry, because they're going to carry this play.

He's the only one of the subjects for the first 30 minutes of it. Exactly. It even after each person has a part of like the person who plays his wife Christina Clark says Elizabeth.

That's Elizabeth. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's okay.

She sits there for the first hour. Doesn't say word. Doesn't say word.

But she emotes very well because she's reacting to what's going on around her as his elder J, he doesn't speak up for a while. And the four of them sit on the, on the stage together in, in the, the churchy chairs. But when they have their part, it's an absolutely brilliant, they brought it into the department, but still throughout the whole thing, the pastor has to carry this production.

And Ferguson did it incredibly. He carried the burden of this production. Whoever gets it, whoever whoever does the casting on this production, whether it be here somewhere else, whoever has a part has a tough role on this.

You gotta bring it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Ferguson brought it.

I thought all five of them had a very, very good chemistry. Tyre East Allen doesn't have a lot to say in this, but he, he's performance is very, very strong. And really Lindsey Ryan, her role is, is, I don't want to say it's a small ring.

There's just not a lie. A lot of dialogue to it. But that role is pivotal to leading from a second act to the third act of a one act play, if that makes any sense.

But it fuels a fire that has to be addressed. And she does it in a way that's got power to it. Even though her characters fairly timid, there's a power and a gravity to her performance that really kind of pushes the thing past a couple of barriers that it could get stuck on when it comes to its subject matter, which I really, really dug as well.

What they all had is that one thing that kind of front I'm kind of like sitting in the theater and usually in most productions, they hit the lights except for the stage area. They bring down the house lights. They didn't bring the house lights.

And a couple of points they did. But it was because it was part of the show. That was my point.

That's one of why don't they hit the house lights? This is not working. But then as the production went on, they dimmed it certain points and got pitch black at some points.

And I understand why. And now it's ingenious when it comes to the lighting on this thing. Because it really set the mode.

Because in the beginning, you think you're at the church. You do. We're thinking, that's about to go.

That's what Joshua comes down, shaking hands and kissing babies and the wires singing. And yeah, I was about to go, how do you get the signal? Let's get going.

You know, this is church, you know. But then after a while, when the lighting changes, you realize that this is a different part, you're still in the church, but down it's a different scene. And just the lighting can switch you from scene to scene or act to act.

And it really did. And it did. Well, I mean, technically very sound great performances.

And now I want to talk a little bit about something that they do. It's a tradition they have. There's like, let me come come early and there's something called state late.

And what the Dallas theater center does is, I think it's a half an hour before the show. You know, it's an hour before the show. Half hour.

No, it's about 50 at, and then it's like five minutes after they get the chip, chip, chip, and a chance to leave. Where they'll have members of the cast come sit down on the stage and talk with people in the audience about their feelings about not just about like, it's not like an interview. It's more of a group discussion.

And what's unique about what they're doing with this particular production is every night as part of state late. There's a local member of the clergy that is sitting in and answering questions about the subject matter. And when we went, there was a local Presbyterian minister, who I thought was very articulate, very much enjoyed what he had to say, very, very, funny, very, very engaging.

And he told some great stories about how some of the things they dealt with in the production tie into some things that some of our local churches are going through. The state late only lasts about 15 minutes, which I really think it could have gone a lot longer because the group, there was probably 50 to 75 people that stayed behind. And that theater sits probably about 750 by my estimation.

And it was a really healthy discussion, even members of the choir were hanging out. And it was all five of the, it wasn't just one person. Joshua came out first, Walters, but by the end of it, all five of them were out there together.

So they were all kind of giving their own input, which I thought was a really, really great thing. And, you know, if you're going to a performance where you can afford an extra 15, 20 minutes, because you may take you that long to get out of the parking lot anyway, stay late or come or I'm not done come early yet. I haven't gotten to that point, but I, but I did want to stay late on this one.

I wanted to see what this was about. And I was very, very impressed with the way it works. It's very open.

There's not a lot of structure to it. They kind of just let the conversation take its own life. And I really, really enjoyed that.

Something unique. Yeah. And I think it's awesome.

I think it's cool. Is there anything else that we want to talk about before we get to the final analysis here? Just coming with an open mind.

Absolutely. I agree with you. That's the best thing.

Didn't you'll really really enjoy it. The way we do the final analysis on this show, we're not going to give you thumbs up thumbs down. We're not going to give you like five hymnos or anything like that.

What we're going to do is we're going to ask two questions. Question number one is, would you see this production again? If the answer is no, then we're done here.

But if the answer is, yes, the follow-up question, since this is a stage production, so show you how much we enjoyed it. It's going to depend on where you want to sit, how much money you want to pay for tickets. So, Don, would you see this again?

Oh, definitely. Where do you want to sit? Right where we sat.

So, right about the middle in the same section. Or just get in though. Just get in.

Just doesn't matter where you sit, because like when you're church, you just got a view and you get to go. I don't think that where you sit matters, but still get in and see this thing. It is worth it.

I would definitely see this again. Just get in the door. Get in the door, because there's not a bad seat in this entire place.

The stage is very open. There's not that you're not, you're not going to miss anything by sitting off to either side. Just get in the door.

And there's some really neat promotions that are having going along with this production. And even if you don't live here in the Dallas Fort Worth area, this is not just done here in Dallas. The playwright lives in New York.

So, this thing's being offered all over the country. If you get a chance to see it, see it. It is wonderful.

It is playing through February 19th here at the Kalita Humphrey Theatre in Dallas. It is called The Christians. For me, in this whole thing, we just think Katherine Manson again, Dallas Theatre Center.

Some of our favorite people. They're so nice to us and they're so gracious to let us come and review things so that we can help the empire make informed decisions. Definitely.

All right, ready to do the plugs? Let's do her. Visit our website.

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And sometimes we're only able to do written reviews instead of written and audio. So always check that stuff out. Follow us on social media.

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69. And how about fun? Don't go and you can email me at Don.

If Clubhousepodcast.com Email Don for information on how we can come and do a live show for you. We've got some coming up very, very soon. We love doing live shows and hanging out with the empire.

We're big fans. You can email me questions, comments, concerns. You can tell me go pound saying if you want.

I'm Rob at the Clubhousepodcast.com. Chad is Chad at the Clubhousepodcast.com. Charlotte Parker is on Pinterest because we are more likely obligated to say that.

And Joe's Warming probably hang out with Chad because you know they're married to kind of works like that. Our normal show is every Sunday night, seven Easter and four Pacific. It is your one stop shop for all things pop culture are just keep subscribing on your favorite podcasting app because you get everything.

So until next time for Don for the empire, I'm Rob. Clubhouse is closed. Pretty Palmer in the choir.