NEW JERSEY
Courier-Post
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
By KEVIN RIORDAN
Courier-Post Staff
The conflicts in "Agnes of God" -- religion vs. science, faith vs. reason, head vs. heart -- are timeless.
But John Pielmeier's 1982 play, now onstage in a stark new production by the Woodbury-based Luna Theater Company, has not aged well.
The story of a possibly insane young nun accused of killing her newborn daughter, "Agnes of God" seems more contrived than it did two decades ago. Perhaps the ongoing sexual abuse coverup scandal has demythologized the Catholic Church or the seams in the playwright's strenuously schematic work have begun not only to show, but to give way.