Permission

Jenny Anderson

Permission, Robert Askins' new play at MCC, is an entertaining if undercooked tangle of ideas that don't fully cohere. Using, as a springboard, the apparently real and squirmingly icky subculture of couples who practice Christian Domestic Discipline, the play ponders--if, ultimately, not all that deeply--broader questions about religion, power relationships, personal happiness, and marital bliss.

Act I opens on two couples--Zach and Michelle (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe and Nicole Lowrance) and Eric and Cynthia (Justin Bartha and Elizabeth Reaser)--gathering for dinner at Zach and Michelle's well-appointed Waco, Texas, home. Zach, a slickly confident sporting-goods salesman, informs Eric that business is so great that he'll be opening a second store. Eric is not as happy or as sure of himself as Zach seems. A professor at the nearby university, he wants the Dean to make him chair of the computer science department, but doesn't have the self-esteem to fight for the position. (Look, I've got insider information here, but seriously, Askins needs to spend maybe five minutes learning about the way college administrations function, because no, that's just not even how it works a little bit, ever.) Also, his marriage isn't at its best: Cynthia drinks too much and has been spending her days actively avoiding the novel she's supposed to be writing.