THEATER REVIEW : Cast of 2 Excels as ‘Illuminati’ Bashes Church

San Diego theater is the scene of some serious church-bashing these days.

Never mind “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which divided viewers as to whether director Martin Scorcese was making the movie as a believer or non-believer.

Live theater hasn’t been so ambivalent.

“Some Things You Need to Know Before The World Ends (A Final Evening With The Illuminati),” a Dark Nights Production at the Lyceum Space through May 13, tackles the misogyny of St. Paul and parodies the application for sainthood in a series of hallucinatory dream sequences by Reverend Eddie, a religious leader who is slowly losing his mind.

Under the direction of Jean Hauser, the artistic director of Dark Nights, the show is often funny, without losing its desperate edge. When Reverend Eddie starts losing his faith, like Brother Lawrence in “Tiny Alice,” another sharp attack on the church now playing at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, he begins to lose his grasp on both his sanity and his life.

It seems eerily fitting that the show was preceded in this space by Christopher Durang’s “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You,” a satire of a nun who has warped the minds of her students with her dogmatism and later finishes off the spiritual murders with physical ones.

Last year, in this same space, the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s “Heathen Valley” dealt with saints being destroyed by the church. Also covering similar ground were the San Diego Rep’s “Red Noses” and the Lamb’s Players Theatre’s “Saint Joan.”

And “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” in which the Catholic church is satirized as an agent of guilt, is on the horizon as the season opener at the Rep in June.

In “Some Things You Need to Know Before The World Ends,” the forces of good and evil, which seem clear to the Rev. Eddie, are given an ironical twist, one reflected in the askew set design by J. Michael Griggs in which a giant cross leans like the Eiffel Tower, but with a basketball hoop affixed to the top.

The reverend believes he has unseen enemies called “The Illuminati.” The Illuminati was the name of a historical group that stood for the principles of republican enlightenment. The word has since come to mean the enlightened.

In this context, what Reverend Eddie is really trying to maintain are the forces of darkness, the principles that set him flailing himself because “God likes pain,” and a martyr’s death is desirable because it is a prerequisite for sainthood.

It is enlightenment, then, that Eddie is fighting. But the rules he clings to are literally the rules that destroy him.

Reverend Eddie plays basketball with the angel. But the angel cheats, and Reverend Eddie’s disillusionment is complete.

This is a two-man show that has only been produced twice before, both times with the co-writers, Larry Larson and Levi Lee, in the roles of Reverend Eddie and his faithful servant, Brother Lawrence. It would be hard to imagine the originals doing a better job than Jonathan Schmock and Eric Grischkat do here.

Schmock, tall, gaunt and acidic in his delivery, looks as if half his brain has been blown out of the water and is straining as hard as he can to still make sense of things.

Sometimes, he seems kin to the defrocked priest in “The Night of the Iguana.” More often, however, he is a brother to Sister Mary Ignatius, who also thinks that the path to heaven is paved with precise instruction manuals on how to proceed to the next step.

The big difference is that, where Mary Ignatius never loses her complacency, Reverend Eddie is dying on the inside.

To the credit of Reverend Eddie, he hurts himself more than he does his disciples, in this case the sweet-tempered Brother Lawrence, an exuberantly realized hunchback by Grischkat, complete with club foot. In fact, Brother Lawrence, with all his wacky visions, single-handedly lifts the play by coming up with a creed that he believes is the essence of what Reverend Eddie was trying to say (and is too wise to even come close to anything the reverend would say): “Don’t tell lies, don’t do what you hate and don’t crawl under the fan blades of the generator” (by which he means don’t kill yourself).

Perhaps this flood of plays should inspire the churches in question to wonder why its doctrines have inspired so much disillusionment. At the same time, this country’s religious institutions should be proud that they can tolerate so much diversity of opinion.

“SOME THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS (A FINAL EVENING WITH THE ILLUMINATI)”

By Larry Larson and Levi Lee.

Director, Jean Hauser. Set and lighting, J. Michael Griggs. Sound, John Hauser. Stage manager, Robin Daubert. With Jonathan Schmock and Eric Grischkat.

At 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, through May 12, and 6 and 9 p.m. May 13. Matinee at 2 p.m. May 7. Ends May 13. At the Lyceum Space, Horton Plaza, San Diego.