Review: 'Avow' -- Breaking and Making Vows and Gay Marriage in the Church

Kate Middleton, Joy Franz and Timothy Sekk. Photo by Jennifer Ievolo

By Lauren Yarger
A young couple in love decides they’re ready to make a lifetime commitment and asks their favorite priest to witness their vows. The problem? Tom and Brian are gay and their church and priest are opposed to their union.

Straight-laced veterinarian Tom (Jaron Farrnham) and freespirit seeing-eye-dog trainer Brian (Timothy Sekk) define themselves as “salad bar” Catholics, taking the parts they feel will provide nourishment and leaving the rest. They approach Father Raymond (Jeremiah Wiggins) to perform their marriage because they like his liberal sermons (he’s against boxing and capital punishment and for women priests and Thomas Merton). Raymond surprises them however, by aligning himself with the church’s teaching against homosexual marriage and urges them to love each other as brothers, but celibately.

Brian is hurt, especially when Tom thinks the priest might be right and starts to withdraw from their relationship, at least sexually. Brian turns for comfort to his concert pianist sister, Irene (an engaging Kate Middleton), who has agreed to let Tom and Brian raise the baby she is carrying following an affair with a married man. She visits Father Raymond to plead their case in the hopes she can “convert” him, but the result of the meeting instead, is a growing attraction between Irene and Raymond.

Added to this convenient, if not entirely believable soap-opera mix from playwright Bill C. Davis, is Brian and Irene’s mother, Rose (an excellent Joy Franz), devoutly Catholic and inexplicably fixated on her own priest, Father Nash (Christopher Graham). She lights candles and prays every day that her estranged son will cease to be a homosexual.

Irene plays peacemaker here too, and when Rose follows Father Nash’s advice to be open to God’s answer, she suddenly hears it: Brian is all right just the way he is and she agrees to have dinner with her children. Franz’s skilled delivery of the line “So here I am with my gay son and my unmarried, pregnant daughter'” gets one of the biggest laughs of the night in a script that makes good use of humor to balance its emotionally charged theme.

Meanwhile, Raymond, whose growing feelings for Irene have him questioning the vows of chastity he made as a young man when he entered the priesthood, seeks the advice of his priest. And if you hadn’t yet guessed, yes, Father Nash is his confessor.

Amidst the plot, which Davis unfortunately attempts to tie up in a neat package instead of allowing a natural ending to stand, all of the different sides of the debate are nicely given equal time. Raymond, though somewhat abruptly and seemingly uncaring about the effect his words will have on Tom and Brian, accurately relays the church’s teaching on the subject of homosexual marriage and its inability to “force the truth around feelings,” but doesn’t go into scriptural detail backing that stand.

Tom admits that he’s always “heard a small voice saying no,” and thinks he and Brian might be wrong. He joins “Courage,” a support group for people choosing a chaste lifestyle.

Brian, who gave up on the church a long time ago, thinks Tom is just buying into the lie with which he was raised and equates his and Tom’s inability to make vows in the church with Raymond’s inability to break his.

The real crux of relationships here, seems to be lust, rather than love, however. Raymond’s apparent physical attraction (he barely knows Irene) causes him to think about leaving the church. When Tom “refuses” Brian, the relationship falters. Even Irene’s previous relationship with the father of her baby was based on sex, and it’s only at Brian’s offer to be the father that she decides to go through with the pregnancy, not because she feels love for the child or its father.

A visual metaphor for this is the couple’s large, ever-present bed (set design by Stephanie Tucci) raised on a platform upstage center, around which all the action, directed by Jerry Less, takes place, regardless of the setting (it’s there in the rectory, in the restaurant, Irene’s apartment, etc.) Clouds painted on blue background surround the stage and give the appearance that the bed is floating above everything else.

And it does, to the point where it seems to eclipse some good, balanced debate on a timely subject. The show plays at the 45th Street Theatre, 354 west 45th St., New York.

Christians might also want to know:
• Homosexual activity
• God’s name taken in vain