Discord

Discord: The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy is playing at the Cherry Lane Theatre located at 38 Commerce St. It runs ninety minutes with no intermission. The play closes on October 22, 2017.

The stage is bare except for a table, two chairs and a door on the left side.

Thomas Jefferson comes in bewildered as to where he is or why? He tries to leave but the door won’t open. Thomas ponders on why he is there. Charles Dickens come in then and finally Leo Tolstoy, each having the same emotions.

They rule out they are there to redeem themselves to someone because each has died at different times, Jefferson 1826, Dickens 1870 and Tolstoy 1910.

Jefferson says look at your reflection in the glass, we all look like when we were in the height of our careers not when we died.

The desk drawer open’s. There is a blank writing book and the gospel. They decide they are to write their interpretation of what the gospel means. Each one discusses what it means to them.

We learn they may have been a brilliant politician and writers. But virtuous they were not, more like and hypocrites. Jefferson promised his wife Martha he would not remarry after she died. However he had an affair with a slave he owned named Sally Hemings and she was Martha’s half-sister. They had six children.

Dickson was unfaithful to his wife Catherine. He denied having an affair between Ellen Ternan/ or Catherine’s Sister Georgia Hogarth. They separate. Dickson blames his wife for the ten children they have.

Tolstoy admitted having affairs with female serfs. He leaves his wife when he is 82.

At the end the drawer opens up and there are three more books and pens to write. Each one grabs a book and writes and writes etc.

It is an interesting play, a different story plot.

You learn things about the values that we are raised on and how we interpret them as adults.

We are all humans no matter how famous we may be.

I like the play but some might find it offensive in the presentation of the gospel and the people who interpreted it.

It did make me look up and read something about each man’s life.

Review by Rozanna Radakovich.

Photos by Annazor.

To read an interview with the cast click on photos for this and other shows.