Theatre in Review: Oh Happy Day! (Public Theater) When was the last time you saw a guardian angel onstage? In Oh Happy Day!, playwright Jordan E. Cooper, a generous soul, supplies no fewer than three. Their names are Glory Divine, Holy Divine, and Mighty Divine. ("No relation to Loretta Devine," one of them cracks.) They are present, in all their girl group splendor (gorgeously dressed by Qween Jean), to usher Keyshawn, the play's protagonist, into the next world. Just before the play begins, Keyshawn, a gay prostitute, was shot to death in a motel parking lot. But before he can face his eternal reward, God has decreed he must save his estranged father, sister, and nephew from an incoming storm of Noah's Ark proportions. That is, if he can manage his temper. The above graph only hints at the careening experience that is Oh Happy Day!. Borrowing the central plot device of Ferenc Molnar's Liliom, Cooper spins a wild mix of comedy, fantasy, and melodrama, throwing in a few tunes and (for the theatre) some surprisingly sophisticated theological speculation. It's a head-snapping change of pace from the author of Ain't No Mo', a borderline-unhinged collection of comic sketches about the US government shipping its Black citizens back to Africa. It's also a major leap forward: Oh Happy Day! offers a gripping experience for audience members willing to brace themselves for its hairpin turns of plot and tone. The Divines enter, singing the news that it's "a good day to be happy," but that particular state eludes Cooper's characters. Lewis, fiftysomething and unemployed, is feeling especially grumpy about his birthday, especially since his daughter, Niecy, is whipping up one of her inedible meals on the outdoor grill. Niecy's twelve-year-old son, Kevin, keeps lobbying for a meal from Golden Corral. (Her reply: "Lil boy, keep running for a bus called 'ass whooping' and you gonna catch it.") After some mildly amusing domestic squabbling, Keyshawn -- the long-estranged prodigal son -- shows up, and, suddenly, the air crackles with tension. Lewis, fixing a gimlet eye on his offspring, growls, "Shouldn't you be at some hotel somewhere, selling yourself?" What Lewis, Niecy, and Kevin don't know is that Keyshawn is already dead. Indeed, Oh Happy Day! is a parable of self-love: God, who keeps inhabiting Kevin, Lewis, and Niecy's bodies to note, testily, "I'm not the God that humans created in their own image," insists Keyshawn won't find eternal peace until he abandons his boiling resentments and saves everyone from a weather disaster that they don't believe in. But it's an uphill climb, as the family's complicated history comes spilling out: For example, there's Lewis' conviction for murder, committed to avenge his wife's drug addiction. And then there's Keyshawn's sexual identity, which got him thrown out of the house while still a teenager. (His grandmother's fervent attempts at praying away the gay came to naught while adding to the boy's damage.) Pouring fuel on the fire, one of Keyshawn's clients is a local minister; when, thanks to a dispute over payment, photos of their activities end up online, the resulting scandal gets Lewis fired from his church job. The shockers come thick and fast, but Cooper has bigger ideas in mind. Keyshawn squares off against God in confrontations that wrestle with two of the most vexing issues in Christianity: the apparent contradiction between an all-powerful God and humankind's free will, and the existence of evil in a world created by a supposedly benign deity. (As God colorfully puts it, "The Gazelle gets mad when a lion eats their child, but I didn't make that happen, I just made the wild. The lion chose its own dinner." Keyshawn replies, "But you just sit back and watch. You don't see how cruel that is?") Later, trapped together in a kind of limbo, Lewis fiercely defends his beliefs, snatched out of despair in prison, as Keyshawn goes on the attack, baring his psychological scars, making short work of Biblical injunctions against homosexuality, indicting predatory pastors, and dropping a bombshell about the cause of his death. Cooper isn't afraid to unleash furies: Oh Happy Day! isn't the most elegant play you'll see this season, but it vibrates with a passion that can't be faked. The director Stevie Walker-Webb keeps a steady hand on this theatrical tinderbox, providing solid guidance to a cast that includes Cooper as Keyshawn, ready to overturn furniture in a rage as he is to make peace with the past. I don't know when Brian D. Coats stepped into the role of Lewis, replacing Keith Randolph Smith, but he makes him a deadly serious antagonist. ("Look at them needle marks," he tells Keyshaw in a menacing tone. "Got holes doing the electric slide all up and down your arm.") Tamika Lawrence provides plenty of sass and common sense as Niecy, and Donovan Louis Bazemore is unassumingly charming as Kevin. The Divines -- Tiffany Mann, Shelea Melody McDonald, and Latrice Pace, live up to their billing -- especially when delivering the catchy, soulful songs by Donald Lawrence. Luciana Stecconi's set, depicting the exterior and front yard of the family's home, strongly evokes the play's Mississippi location; it also executes an impressive coup when Keyshawn faces his spiritual moment of truth. The lighting, by Adam Honore and Shannon Clarke, is especially evocative when that fateful storm is brewing; the latter effect is aided by Taylor J. Williams' sound design, which also delivers a solid job of reinforcement during the musical numbers. Oh Happy Day! has its lapses, including an opening that could be funnier and a backstory involving Keyshawn's friend Diamond, a kind of transgender mother to queer outcasts, that is insufficiently developed. But there's real passion here, allied to strong dramatic instincts. Cooper can call up gale-force emotions that rival any storm system God might unleash. And he delivers an exceptionally entertaining band of angels. --David Barbour 
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