Sacrament!

Yes, Dave Eggers has written a play, too. Get over it. Even better: See it, and come out saying, "Oh yeah, I like Eggers." In collaboration with Campo Santo and director Kent Nicholson, the writer seems reinvigorated by the immediacy of theater. The tone is familiar: equal parts goofiness and gravitas, with results greater than the sum of their parts. The aesthetic is familiar as well: a handsome production, clean, controlled, and elegant in a pared-down way. And, of course, the material is familiar (from Eggers' novel You Shall Know Our Velocity!): Two young men, bearing a financial windfall and a friend's death, travel the world on impulse, grieving and giving away money. Should be easy enough. But, as Will (Sean San José) observes, "It's always so fucking complicated!" Identity, both civic and personal, is a creative act: It demands the effort of self-reflection, of converting memory into inspiration, yet the actors here pull it off. Danny Wolohan, as Hand, makes great, simple choices and is impossible not to like. He and San José have fine support from Tina Marie Murray and Michael Torres. If the cast's headlong charges into the text sometimes seem memorized beyond the prospect of discovery (and read like a phobia of stillness), it might be considered a thematic preoccupation. To discover mystery is an artist's privilege and his task, and Eggers won't let that opportunity be squandered. The show beseeches you to stay open above all; it'll leave you feeling at once wrung-out and ravenous.