Man from Nebraska: A Play

I would have liked this play better if I'd read if before "August: Osage County." The idea of religious faith and how it is passed down from parent to child, as well as the fallout when one's faith fails are themes that I enjoy exploring in fiction, and this particular work addresses these in the life of a middle-aged man from Nebraska.

"Do you ever look around? At the people around you, their habits and their things they do. The way they live, that we live. Do you ever think about the food we eat, and think about where the food comes from, where it goes? All the people" (20).

The playwright from Oklahoma has moved his attention two states north, with a man who comes from Lincoln, NE. The play is about a man who suffers a crisis of faith and must learn to reconcile his strange new state. On the advice of his pastor, he takes a long trip away from wife and children, finding himself in London. The play is written reasonably well, and the characters are fleshed out and believably unlikeable. The main problem is the perpetuation of stereotypes that undergrid this work. The loss of faith will not be believable to those who have lost their faith, and the behavior of the man during his crisis of faith is designed to put the non-belief community in a bad light. In short, this is a story with a moral, but is so poorly show more executed that it will not touch the audience it is probably most directed toward. Also, the choice of making the man a Baptist probably speaks to the Oklahoma roots of the writer, and perhaps a slight bit of unfamiliarity with Nebraska, where Baptists are not all that common. Overall, it was disappointing, a bit slight, but not terrible. show less