"In the Book Of ..." another fine chapter in ASF's history...Rick Harmon

Although it has been said that the Alabama Shakespeare Festival production "In the Book Of..." is about immigra­tion, those who see it will quickly realize that while the play may address immigration, what it is about is great the­ater.
This is not some didactic po­lemic on a controversial issue, it is one of those rare produc­tions that manages to be con­sistently funny and incredibly moving -- one that haunts your thoughts long after the play has ended.
The play, written by John Walch as part of ASF's South­ern Writer's Project, concerns immigration, but its real focus is on disparate, broken people in a small Southern town and how through love and strength of family they make each other whole again.
The plot begins a world away from Mississippi.
Lt. Naomi Watkins (Rachel Leslie) is leaving both Afgha­nistan and the Army, but not by choice. Her husband, a mili­tary officer who deployed to Afghanistan at the same time she did, has died in battle. Now, she seems to have little interest in whether she lives or dies, an attitude that has endangered the troops she commands.
But she wants to make her last act in the military a mean­ingful one. Anisah (Sarah Co­rey), an Afghani translator working with the U.S. military, is also a widow. Insurgents murdered her husband, who was also a translator for the military, and now her life is at risk. Naomi, who is returning to the small Mississippi town of Broxton where her husband's family lives and where her hus­band had a home, is de­termined to bring Anisah with her.
But her timing couldn't be worse because her sister-in-law, Gail (Blair Sams), has just had an epiphany at McDon­ald's.
Gail has known things haven't been right in her life for a long time. Her husband, Bo Sr. (Christoper Gerson), isn't the man he used to be. He once enjoyed working with his hands. Then a wave of foreign immigrants willing to work for less sank the busi ness, forcing him to work at a sandwich-shop franchise, and seemingly emas­culating him in the process.Their son, Bo Jr. (Matt Dick­son), is in much worse shape, living a life of misery in pen­ance for accidentally causing the death of his brother.
In a brilliant monologue, Gail tells how her feelings about having illegal foreigners work­ing at McDonald's and laughing at her because they can't un­derstand her accent -- foreign­ers who have forever changed the small town she so fondly remembers and who cost her husband his livelihood -- co­alesces into anger. Soon, she has grabbed a broom, is stand­ing on the McDonald's counter and is talking about sweeping out the illegals, so America can once again be for Americans.
Her words don't just send Latino employees scurrying out the back door, they strike a chord with many others in the town. So much so that Gail is pressed (not that she has to be pressed that hard) into running for mayor, and her issue of sweeping out illegal immi­grants might just win her the campaign.
It's then that Naomi arrives with her own illegal immigrant in tow.
"In the Book Of. . ." has a fine cast of characters, but no villains. What we see are good people who disagree. In fact, perhaps the play's greatest strength is that Walch, director Risa Brainin and a superb cast have created a production in which we not only like every character, but care about them.
There is perhaps no bigger reviewer cliche than "I laugh­ed. I cried," but few will not be able to say it after this funny, uplifting play loosely on the biblical Book of Ruth about kind characters in a Mississip­pi town who help each other re­cover from private tragedies.
If the play is wonderful, it is matched by ASF's production. There is a valid argument that the play has one too many con­clusions, but there is no argu­ment that Brainin and the cast (which is only five people but seems like far more) do a bril­liant job.
The result is that the ASF-created "In the Book Of ..." is another fine chapter in ASF's history.