Written by DCist contributor Monica Shores

Taffety Punk’s Faithkiller is a play clearly influenced by the bitter partisanship that has recently dominated politics, the media, and, too often, personal interactions. As one character tells another, “It’s black and white, or it’s nothing.”

Gwydion Suilebhan’s ambitious script follows several collections of characters in disparate situations that all converge around a TV remake of a 1940s radio show about a hero with a faith-eliminating gun. The characters are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or atheist, and vehemently so, in the blind way that leads to lies, hypocrisy, and general devastation. (Buddhists and Hindus apparently don’t lend themselves as well to this type of intensity, and so are spared representation.)

There are no heroes or villains here. With self-righteous certainty, characters slide back and forth seamlessly between moments of compassion and moments of betrayal of those they love. This fluidity becomes exhausting and after a certain point, implausible. More importantly, there seems to be no clear message as to what it all means. The script lashes out at monotheism, non-belief, and even, in one bizarre moment, feminism, without ever arriving at some indication as to why these indictments matter. No American should need instruction on why stridency is destructive, or the ways in which religious conviction can lead to hubris.