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John Patrick Shanley brews a new drama regarding ethical, spiritual and racial issues

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

So it’s good news and bad news over at Atlantic Theater Company, which premiered “Storefront Church” on Monday at the freshly-renovated Linda Gross Theater.

The good news is that the $8 million-plus enlargement of the Linda Gross Theater results in a new lobby area and bathrooms, comfortable seating, a deeper stage and many technical improvements that most patrons probably won’t notice but will appreciate for years to come.

The bad news is that “Storefront Church” is a disappointing drama from John Patrick Shanley, whose terrific, Pulitzer-winning play “Doubt” began his “Church and State” trilogy that concludes so weakly with this work. (Between them was “Defiance,” an okay study in racism at a Marine base in the 1970s.)

Shanley’s contemporary story regards Donaldo (Giancarlo Esposito), a fictional Bronx borough president, whose ethics are challenged and risk serious compromise when he reluctantly assists a family friend, Jessie (Tonya Pinkins), an older lady about to lose her home in a mortgage default.

A pending $300 million mall project figures into the complicated plot involving a calculating financier (Jordan Lage), a storefront church minister who’s lost his ability to preach (Ron Cephas Jones), and a bank officer (Zach Grenier) physically and emotionally disfigured from a terrible incident in his past.

Further mixed into Shanley’s brew of spiritual, socio-economical and moral dilemmas are racial issues, some of which regard Donaldo’s uneasy Italian-Puerto Rican heritage and the unlikely marriage between Pentecostal Jessie, a Latina, and Ethan (Bob Dishy), a jolly secular Jew who gets matters off to a dramatic start when he suffers a heart seizure at the loan office.