“Without God As My Lover,” a one-act, two-character play by Megan Medley, was one of the better offerings at this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival. 

We meet Teresa (played by Em Whitworth), a fallen-away Catholic turned atheist rejected by her outwardly pious Catholic father because of her sexuality. (Note: the word “lesbian” is never used in Medley’s play although ‘queer’ is used despite its multiple — and ambiguous — meanings. In other words, a person can identify as “queer” without ever engaging in homosexual acts.) 

Rejecting religion because of sexuality issues is fairly common in society. Men and women who marry but divorce and then cannot get an annulment leave the Church feeling extremely bitter. Many LGBT people leave the Church because its catechism classifies homosexuality as sinful. Catholic women who become indoctrinated with feminist ideology leave the Church because of “the patriarchy” or pro-life issues. These “one issue” ex-Catholic migrants, so the saying goes, throw the baby out with the bathwater: relegated to the dumpster are the rich 2,000 year old teachings of Catholicism.  

Any casual observer can see there’s been a massive turning away from traditional Christianity among young women. As one Orthodox Christian nun said to me recently: “Something has happened to young women in the culture. Religious vocations among men — to be monks — are way up, but that’s not true with women.”

Women seem to be more vulnerable to woke culture seduction than men. The “abominable impiety” is feminism, as German philosopher and writer Baroness Gertrud von Le Fort once wrote. Le Fort also called feminism “the true expression of modern godlessness.”  

Medley’s Teresa embodies this concept beautifully. Teresa is representative of those lost feminists who have a chip on their shoulder. From the start of the play, Teresa presents as stereotypically patriarchy-hating. She’s pissed off because the Catholic Church doesn’t embrace her rainbow queerness — she hints she’s bisexual but as the play progresses we see her heterosexuality come into full D.H. Lawrence bloom. 

We learn there’s nothing “queer” about her, especially when it comes to falling in love with a charismatic young male priest.  

She falls for Fr. Daniel, the priest who was her deceased father’s confessor — and who knows what her father confessed and may have said about her before his death.

She is determined to find out the facts and so she goes to confession to Fr. Daniel herself. Her confession, of course, is part confrontation and diatribe. Father Daniel (played by Mike Spara) is a youngish cookie-cutter priest who appears to do things by the book. He is presented as one who hasn’t had too many real-life experiences, meaning he probably entered the seminary at eighteen straight out of high school. His intensity suggests a hidden volcanic sexuality.

In some traditional Native American cultures, the way a woman showed she was interested in a man was through insult and confrontation. This created a foundation for the cultivation of the erotic. 

Teresa’s style during confession is one of shock and awe; she’s not a nuance girl at all. She’s like those freshly minted ex-Catholics who can’t stop trashing the Church. 

Beneath her anger it’s obvious she’s hurting and searching for spiritual answers secular culture cannot provide. She becomes obsessed with Fr. Daniel and visits him multiple times. Each visit leaves Fr. Daniel a little weaker but there are also changes in Teresa. She eventually receives communion at one of his Masses although it’s not because she believes but receiving the Host from his hands is another way to become closer to him. Throughout it all Fr. Daniel does his best to defend the faith but his lack of life experience makes his advice lack conviction. When Teresa demands to know what her father confessed to him as he lay dying. Fr. Daniel defers to the Seal of Confession.

“I can be excommunicated if I tell you,” he says. (In an interesting twist later in the play, Fr. Daniel reveals what her father said about her but it’s not what Teresa expected to hear.)

Cracks in Fr. Daniel’s priestly armor appear when Teresa asks him if he believes in hell and he responds by quoting the French existentialists — hell is life on earth, he says, adding he doesn’t believe in an eternal hell at all. Of course, blatant heresy like this goes against everything Catholic — unless you’re talking to a modernist Jesuit who supports Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. 

The two develop a deeper understanding of one another. Fr. Daniel, in wanting to be compassionate, allows his more tender side to emerge and Teresa, the wild card in the throes of an attraction she doesn’t quite understand, allows herself to be physically embraced as the two begin to share a light moment of intimacy — although Fr. Daniel prevents the union from becoming sexual.

Then, like the Old Testament Jezebel, Teresa does an about-face and informs the Diocese that Fr. Daniel behaved inappropriately towards her. The betrayal leads to Fr. Daniel being fired. 

His life in ruins, Fr. Daniel asks Teresa why she did what she did. But the forever-wild-card Teresa doesn’t know. She becomes a weeping penitent and asks for Fr. Daniel’s forgiveness. 

Yet in his heart Fr. Daniel knows he’s not really a believing priest — he doesn’t believe in hell, after all — and in some sense Teresa is a sort of dark angel sent to liberate him from a false life and a lie. 

A Catholic priest who doesn’t believe in hell is tantamount to an atheist. 

Teresa and Fr. Daniel embrace passionately but there’s no joyful ride into the sunset. Teresa goes her own way, not quite the hard atheist she once was but as a slightly different person.

Initially, when asked to review this play I was put off when I read a quote from the Megan Medley, the playwright: 

“In 2020 we founded a creative collective dedicated to uplifting the work of women and other marginalized genders. That collective has developed and grown since to become the theater and film producing entity called Taproot Creatives. “

Other marginalized genders? Let’s begin and end with this: there are only two genders sans the legacy of the berdache in Native American culture, but whatever.  

Ordinarily when one thinks of the Fringe Festival one thinks of amateur productions. “Without God As My Lover” breaks the mold. Mike Spara’s acting is nothing less than world-class. The Fringe stage was really too small for a talent as big as his. The Irish-Lebanese actor is a graduate of Mulberry College and Catholic University and a former English teacher. His bio includes multiple film and television appearances. Whitworth is convincing as Teresa — her Stella Adler NYC training shows. On her resume you’ll find she once played Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at the Washington Stage Guild. Both have TV and movie credits.    

Yellow Bicycle Theater was founded by Joshua Crone, who describes himself as a conservative writer/director, theater critic, translator, and former Marine. Crone says he founded the theater in response to pandemic-era polarization and censorship, a place “where artists across the ideological spectrum can develop and present their work and engage in productive debate. “

In a one-horse overly woke theater town like Philadelphia, this is nothing less than pure gold.

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.