Caravaggio, Sacrifice of Issac, (1602)

 

     

      Maybe you heard the story in Sunday School: One day out of the blue, God asks Abraham, patriarch of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim people, to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. God does not really give a reason for the request, and Abraham does not ask questions; he just tells Isaac they are going on a trip, loads up their donkey, and sets off to find the perfect spot to make a burnt human offering. Just when Isaac begins to wonder where exactly the lamb they’re supposed to be sacrificing is, Abraham ties him up and whips out a knife to slit his throat. At the last second, an angel yells down and tells Abraham to stop the sacrifice; Abraham has proven his faith just by his willingness to go through with it. The scene that sticks with any young reader of the Old Testament, in part thanks to its immortalization in paintings, sculpture, and garish cartoon Sunday School handouts. Though the Sunday School cartoons are a close second, my favorite of these depictions has to be Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac (1602). Caravaggio captures the scene perfectly: Abraham looks grim and determined; Isaac squirms under his father’s grip, mouth open in an almost audible “Oh my God, DAD!!” A near-panicked angel stops Abraham’s hand and suggests a meat substitute of the pleasant-looking ram in the right-hand corner. Evidently, the ram does not yet have a grasp on his situation. 

       

     This moment is supposedly pivotal, a final test of faith that leads God to crown Abraham the patriarch we know and love, but I have always found it to be one of the more disturbing Bible stories (and it definitely has some strong competition). No amount of cutesy cartoons could mask the horror of Isaac’s situation—a vulnerable boy nearly sacrificed to an invisible deity by his own father?! Talk about years of therapy. Though Abraham is considered the father of Judaism, part of me wonders if anyone should be trusting a father so gung-ho about killing his own son. Not exactly Dad of the Year, was he? The one redeeming part of the story was that, despite Abraham’s can-do attitude, Isaac didn’t die. But what if he had? 

       

      In Abraham & God Play Ping Pong, premiered August 28, 2020 over Zoom by Walking Shadow Readers’ Theater, up-and-coming playwright Erin Gruodis-Gimbel humorously explores an alternate ending for which God gratefully gobbles up Isaac with a smidge of horseradish, much to a horrified Abraham’s surprise. Driven by quick, witty allusions to scripture and punctuated by poignant soliloquies on man’s relationship with the divine, Abraham & God Play Ping Pong strikes comic gold. Refusing to go home until God brings back to life the devoured Isaac, Abraham (Samuel Repshas) tags along with the hilariously apathetic Lord (Becca Gibson) as they wile away the days with various amusements. The two share a cheese board, play cards, do facemasks, drink multiple bottles of wine, and—yes—play ping pong as they argue over the fairness of Isaac’s death and discuss everything from free will to the merits of peeing standing up. Gruodis-Gimbel’s God is “new at the controls,” sometimes careless with divine power and more similar in demeanor to an impulsive drinking buddy than an omnipotent, all-powerful deity. Contrasted with the traditional European image of a white, gray-bearded, lightning-bolt-wielding master of the universe, this depiction of a blasé God garners most of the laughs in this short but delightful play. To add to the comedy, the Jewish Gruodis-Gimbel peppers the script with imaginative origin stories for practices like circumcision and abstaining from shellfish. Gibson plays her scenes with nonchalance and detached amusement, just what one might expect from an eternal being for whom human lives are so short as to be practically insignificant. As Abraham, Repshas is endearing, bringing the pious patriarch down to earth with moments of unexpected playfulness and relatability. The actors manage to bring the play to life without the use of props, sets, or costumes. Their ease in doing so speaks to the quality of the script—Gruodis-Gimbel’s jokes do not need runway lights to land. 

       

      For all its humor, the play is at its heart a reflection on the relationship between God and man. These moments of sincerity are tender, imagining the pressure human expectation must put on a being we believe to be infallible. Humans alternately blame, thank, or curse God for the events of the world with the assumption that everything that happens as part of some grand scheme cooked up by a bigger man with a plan. This play asks its viewers to consider for a moment that there is no plan, that maybe God is just like us—a little more talented, maybe, but fallible, capable of slip ups. God might be unsure, apologetic, clumsy, experimental, and much more human than we are comfortable believing. After all, this reading takes place over Zoom, an adaption to accommodate the pandemic’s disruption of live theatre; doesn’t a deadly virus seem like something a clumsy creator might cook up on an impulse and accidentally spill into our atmosphere? Over the last year, those of us that believe in a higher power may have questioned its qualifications. What if Gruodis-Gimbel is close to the truth? What would that mean for our world? How would our behavior change if we knew that guy in charge didn’t have a clue? By pulling us in with cheeky humor, this play helps us ponder this potentially frightening possibility, all the while reassuring us that at least we can laugh about it.   

       

      Gruodis-Gimbel is a young playwright, but her talent for using humor to unpack mind-numbing theological possibilities is mature. Fans of irreverence will anticipate her future work, anxious to see how she might satirize our other saintly forefathers. Abraham & God Play Ping Pong makes you laugh and makes you think, the philosophical riot we didn’t know we needed in this strange new era.