ON STAGE: “100 Saints You Should Know” @ Schenectady Civic Players

Written by on January 29, 2025

Review by J Hunter.

“The struggle is real.” That phrase has been around long enough that it’s way too easy to parody. Unfortunately for some, the struggle is all too real as they deal with personal issues, career choices, and the support they get (or don’t get) from their respective families. Kate Fodor’s deeply intimate play “100 Saints You Should Know” puts an extra-large magnifying glass on the issues of a few people just trying to get by.

By her own admission, Theresa (Brigitta Rose) is “barely an adult.” She does scut work for a local cleaning service, and our first glimpse of her is cleaning a toilet in the rectory of a Catholic church. It’s there that she kinda-sorta “meets-cute” with Father Matthew (Alex Yun), a new parish priest who just needed to use the bathroom. However, Matthew has his own newsstand of issues, some of which get him temporarily suspended from the parish early in the play. “I am lonely,” he blurts early on to the audience, but his only alternative after suspension does not help.

Brigitta Rose and Zurie Adams (photo provided)

They say home is the place where they have to take you in, so Matthew is forced to move back home with his mother Colleen (a riveting Maureen Baillargeon Aumond), a first-generation Irish immigrant who knows what she believes and believes what she knows, particularly when it comes to religion and the Church. Colleen’s proudest moment in life is when she “gave Matthew to God” after raising him specifically to do the job he’s got now. Any personal issues he may have are simply not to be discussed – and when they finally are, we see a side of Colleen that is both unfortunate and upsetting.

Theresa’s “cross to bear” is her 15-year old mixed-race daughter  Abby, who lives by her impulses and has a manipulative streak that starts out funny and becomes progressively horrifying. She ends up contributing to a tragedy that effects everyone in the play, most notably delivery boy / ”Failure to Launch” candidate Garrett (Jake Huerter), who literally has no direction in his life and absolutely no clue how to acquire one as he delivers groceries for his racist shopkeeper father. Zurie Adams’ electric performance makes Abby both likable and unnerving: The ease with which she wraps Garrett around her little finger, again, starts out funny but becomes horribly mean-spirited as Abby uses this stranger to make herself feel both powerful and in control.

Jake Huerter and Zurie Adams (photo provided)

Rose’s Theresa is truly trying to do her best in a life of drudgery. She remembers the book “100 Saints You Should Know” she got as a present when she was 8, and longs for the simplicity that book promised. During a halting monologue in Act Two, we find out how Theresa got excised from her own family of origin, going “on tour” with the Grateful Dead after Abby is born. We see how Abby is the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree, and when Mother and Daughter fight, it’s like listening to the same teenage girl having an argument with herself. “I’m not mad at you,” Abby tells Theresa at one point. “I hate you!”

Like Huerter, this is Yan’s first appearance at Civic, and he does yeoman’s work bringing Matthew to life as he battles his mother, his sexuality, and his belief in both the Lord and in the job that he was raised to do. When Matthew says he “doesn’t pray”, he means that he speaks the words of the liturgy but has no personal feeling for them. As Colleen’s biggest “accomplishment”, Matthew wants to please his mother but also wants to talk to her about the changes he’s going through – even though he knows the odds of everything going to Hell are pretty good. When Theresa shows too much interest in Matthew for Colleen’s liking, she says firmly twice (and yelling once), “My son belongs to GOD!”

Director Tony Pallone has kept things beautifully simple, using unadorned modular sets to keep the scenes changing without too much extended foofaraw by the crew. Pallone has also constructed a beautiful sound design that shows how deep God extends into our culture – from the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” and Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” to Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” which wonders what it would be like if God “was a slob like one of us.” Most of the characters would be good with that, although Colleen would be mortified at the concept.

“100 Saints You Should Know” has moments that are hard to watch as the characters try to lose the mental & emotional chains that hold them back from their own happiness. There are also some pictures that some might find disturbing when they’re displayed during an anguished monologue by Yan. But given halcyon performances from a cast that makes these situations all too relatable, it’s worth it to you to experience those moments and root for the characters as they deal with reality the only way they know and then try to change that reality – if not for the better, than for the different.

“100 Saints You Should Know” plays Wednesday, January 29 through Sunday, February 2 at Schenectady Civic Playhouse, 12 S. Church Street, Schenectady NY. For tickets and showtimes, please call (518) 382-2081 or visit www.civicplayers.org.


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