Theatre in Review: Communion (the cell)

	Matthew LaBanca. Photo: Carol Rosegg

If you follow New York City's local news, you may be familiar with the case of Matthew LaBanca, who was fired from his positions as a music teacher in a Queens Catholic school and choir director at a nearby parish. It got plenty of media attention at the time, but it is told here with searing attention to detail by LaBanca himself. A professional musical-theatre actor who grew disenchanted with his lonely, peripatetic professional life, he was delighted to refocus on education. "I thought my dream of having children was over, but suddenly, 350 of them landed into my life," he says, adding about his choir, "It was a community. That wanted me. Right here in my neighborhood in Queens. And they wouldn't vanish on closing night."

Except vanish they did. A few years later, LaBanca met Rowan, the love of his life, and they were married at a ceremony that brought together their family and friends, realizing what had once been an impossible dream. One of the most affecting touches in Ryan Belock and Julian Kelley's projection design is the footage of the men dancing, ecstatically, at the reception. "I felt so lucky," LaBanca notes.

His luck runs out when someone tattles to the monsignor in charge of the parish and the nun who serves as board chair at the school. LaBanca is interrogated, via telephone, and is forced to publicly acknowledge what everyone already knows, that he is legally married to a man. Get ready for some contortions worthy of Cirque du Soleil as the nun, Sister Joan, tells him, "Honestly, if this was never made public, we wouldn't even be discussing it." Mentioning that Pope Francis endorsed the idea of civil unions for gay people, Sister Joan replies, "But that is not a church teaching. It's an opinion." "But he's the pope," LaBanca adds, dejectedly.

The meeting is followed by an interminable waiting period while the archdiocese processes his case, treating him as a pesky HR problem, not a distressed person fighting for his livelihood. Ironically, it drags on because Luke, the school's principal, continues to fight for him. "I even had the lawyer in Brooklyn consult with the lawyer at Notre Dame to see how they got around hiring Pete Buttigieg," Luke says. "But they said, 'In the capacity that he was working at the university,' he's not really professing the faith.' And I said, 'So many things Matthew teaches here, he'd be teaching in a public school. Is that ministry?'" When the boom is finally lowered, LaBanca is, astonishingly, told he can look for the same work in another diocese, preferably Long Island, where other administrators will have to deal with the headaches he poses. Then again, if he wants his severance package, he is told he must sign a ten-page NDA. As Communion makes blazingly clear, he opted out of that deal.

The toxic effects of this don't-ask-don't-tell policy are too numerous to count. The members of the church's choir are well acquainted with LaBanca's personal life, having frequently socialized with him and Rowan. (Any practicing Catholic -- especially someone living in an urban area -- knows how to shop around in search of a simpatico community; there are many parishes in New York where LaBanca's case would never have become an issue.) Hang on for the episode when he is invited to sing (show tunes, of course) at a clandestine retreat for gay priests. Despite the spiritual designation, it's a chance for these closeted men to briefly escape the isolation that defines their lives. The sequence further confirms how deeply the Church is supported by the men and women it disdains. In a bitterly ironic moment, LaBanca, having lost both jobs and a spiritual community, passes his former church, seeing a welcome sign that is a direct blow to his heart. There's no happy ending on tap, but in Communion's final moments, his friends in the choir make a silent gesture that powerfully rebukes the hypocrisies of the Church's hierarchy.

LaBanca is such a charming presence -- one can easily see how he transmuted his musical theatre skills into an effective teaching technique -- that I didn't mind when he made the audience get up and sing along. (Well, not too much.) Working with the director Kira Simring, he easily draws us into his story, making us feel the gross injustice handed him by clerics hiding behind a wall of bureaucratic indifference. It's a potent exercise in empathy and a pity that those who need it most -- i.e., his tormentors -- aren't likely to see it.

Communion also has an unusually slick production design. Will Morris' scenic concept fills the playing area with wooden frames, their muslin canvases serving as projection surfaces. The frames are also internally lit, allowing for color chases and stained-glass window effects. (Morris is also the lighting designer.) Julianne Merrill's sound design includes hymns, a vesper service, phone conferences, voicemails, and Tony Bennett singing "Time After Time," along with TV and radio broadcasts that combine with projections in a remarkable sequence detailing the media firestorm that erupts after LaBanca's case goes public. Costume designer Nicole Zausmer has fitted LaBanca in the standard teacher outfit of khakis and a patterned, long-sleeved, button-down shirt. You could slip him into any episode of Abbott Elementary.

And public school is where LaBanca now works, doing pretty much what he did previously, without fear of exposure or censure. Communion is a powerful testimony, in effect the cauterizing of an open wound; it lays bare the terrible ripple effects when the Catholic Church behaves in un-Christlike ways. --David Barbour