GOD’S MAN IN TEXAS, Northlight Theatre, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. Televangelist Phillip Gottschall oversees a multimillion-dollar ministry with its own bowling alley, multiplex cinema, and dinner theater, yet David Rambo’s play is not about hucksters. In fact, what’s most intriguing and gratifying about this comedy-drama is that it treats its characters–including the spry 81-year-old Gottschall; his potential successor, the earnest Reverend Jeremiah Mears; and the born-again sound technician and gofer Hugo Taney–with refreshing seriousness and respect. Gottschall may be obsessed with TV ratings and the trappings of evangelical fame, but he’s less a calculating cynic than a true believer with misplaced priorities. When Mears’s efforts to succeed Gottschall are thwarted by the old man’s paranoia and his own reservations about running a Las Vegas-style Christian empire, the result is a compelling consideration of religion’s role in a cynical, media-saturated society that’s critical of the church without rejecting it entirely.
