Is Kidnaping for Jesus a Moral Right?

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Imagine going to an abortion clinic and waking up days later handcuffed to a bed in a basement where you will be held prisoner until it is too late to get an abortion. You are the captive of a Christian underground prepared to do anything to protect a fetus' rights, even kidnap you, take you hundreds of miles from home and "document" your experience as an unwilling mother. Your captors mean to use you as a public test case proving they know what is best. Indeed, you were chosen specifically because you were raped -- the rape victim has always been the most nettlesome case for right-to-lifers, they explain, and they want to demonstrate that their remedy is redemptive even in extremis. There is no point in screaming, because you cannot be heard. There is no point in fighting, because your captors may flinch but will meticulously turn the other cheek, trying to shame you with sanctimony. And there is no point in reasoning, because their minds are made up about what God wants and the necessity of following his will.

This nightmare situation, not exactly ripped from the headlines but a plausible extension of them, befalls a young woman at the outset of Keely and Du, perhaps the most important and surely the most harrowing American play produced outside New York City this year. It debuted briefly at Actors Theatre of Louisville's annual new play festival in March, and the same production opened a five-week run last week at Connecticut's Hartford Stage Company. Other stagings have been seen at the Dublin Festival and, currently, in Washington, and one is planned at Houston's Alley Theatre.

Such a play could easily degenerate into an endless debate, going over all too familiar terrain, about the nation's thorniest ethical issue. But just when it seems that is about to happen, playwright Jane Martin turns out to have plenty to say about the antifeminist anger that may underlie much activism. The lead captor, a windy minister, appears to have trouble separating his concern for unborn children from his devotion to patriarchal authority. He keeps referring to himself as "the head of the family." He condescends unashamedly to the day-to-day keeper, a grandmotherly woman who is trained as a registered nurse and who is old enough to be his mother. In the most unnerving scene, he brings in the kidnap victim's estranged husband, an alcoholic abuser who considers himself saved by born-again Christianity. It was he who, in the aftermath of their breakup, raped his wife as a way of reasserting his claim. Speaking in an affectless, almost lobotomized-sounding whisper, the husband alternately pledges to put his ex-wife on a pedestal and take possession of her and the child as rightfully his. The minister looks on approvingly throughout.

The play's inner life is the growing bond between the captive, Keely, and her grandmotherly keeper, Du. Part of the closeness is their natural sympathy as women beleaguered by men. Part is a shared, stereotypically feminine impulse to focus on an individual situation more than an abstract principle. Part, too, is the "Stockholm syndrome" of intimacy between hostage and hostage taker as a way of enduring forced togetherness. The effect is especially strong in this situation because, unlike most hostages, the young woman has no fear of being murdered -- her captors are desperate to keep her alive, if only as an incubator.

When it appears she may die, however, reducing their grand experiment to a shameful crime, the Christian soldiers' first impulse is to leave her to her fate. Their rationalization is they need to stay free to fight another day for the larger cause. Only her fellow female is humane enough to risk imprisonment while saving her.

The right-to-life case is made with unusual moral force. But the play is unmistakably pro-choice. So is the audience, to judge from its responses. The play has not sparked formal protest yet, perhaps because its publicity campaign has downplayed the plot's polemic nature.

The production, by Jon Jory, the artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville, needs polishing. Most scenes are cinematically brief, but the scene changes are long and noisy. Both acts end with poignant, diminuendo remarks that plainly do not strike audiences as a climax, so applause, although sustained, is painfully slow in coming. While Anne Pitoniak's Du is a tonic blend of folksy approachability and rigid religion, Julie Boyd's Keely seems far better educated and statelier than the beer-loving bar veteran and blue-collar knockabout sketched in the text.

Just whose text remains a matter of mystery. "Jane Martin" is a pseudonym for the author or authors of seven plays over the past decade, including the prizewinners Talking With and Cementville. It is widely believed the reclusive author is Jory himself, in collaboration with a literary adviser to his theater. Says Jory, who refuses to reveal anything: "She honestly feels, for whatever reason, that she couldn't write plays if people knew who she was and what she was." If remaining secret is the price for plays of the caliber of Keely and Du, let her stay hidden forever.