Last night I was fortunate enough to catch Nongod, a trilogy of one-act plays written by Leon Lone and directed by Caitlyn Marr that imagine the modern existences of deities from now-defunct pantheons.
Lone (which is a pen name for the talented dramatist Lana Meyer) deftly sets up improbable situations, including details that feel like plot holes or sloppy writing, only to reveal in clever twists how all the elements of the story come together.
According to the story, Isis found all of the pieces except for Osiris's phallus, so in the play, Osiris searches a Manhattan apartment for his missing member. Much of the humor of the piece comes from the interaction of the mighty but incomplete deity with the four ridiculous artists: a novelist who can't write anything longer than a short story, his non-monogamous partner who embodies her work rather than writing it down, a poet who has sworn off writing even his name, and an unobtrusive wallflower who has taken a vow of silence.
The second play, Egor & York, takes on slavic mythology, which is largely shrouded in mist. We are introduced to Egor (played by Joey Rotter) who is down to only one cult follower, York, who keeps the god alive on eggshells and other questionable foods. York is distracted by his love for Ysabel (played by Georgia Kate Cohen), who turns out to be a nongod, but might be more powerful that the declining old deities like Egor.
Lone completes the triptych with Rainmake, which appears to take place out on the frontier of a nineteenth-century United States, but engages with the mythology of the Aztecs. Who exactly is the deity in this piece isn't revealed until the end, but we are introduced to a feuding married couple, Nicholas (played by Jacob Morton) and Delia (played by Emily Ma) who have miraculously survived a mysterious disaster.
Nongod closes tomorrow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you'd better hurry to get your tickets before these divine comedies disappear.
