[In the following review, Simon praises the direction, writing, and acting in Racing Demon.]

Lincoln Center Theater finally has a winner in Racing Demon. If the late, unlamented Sacrilege showed us how not to write a controversial play about church and religion, David Hare’s Shavian spellbinder is an exemplary how-to. For this internecine combat of contrasting Christianities in the arena of the Church of England is as riveting as a boxing match and as intellectually stimulating as an Oxford Union debate. Also theater so damned good that Hare in the hereafter will be consigned to hell, where—as we hear—conversation is infinitely livelier than in the other place. There are four artfully interwoven problems: What to do about a clergyman whose socialist leanings and religious doubts make him a potential liability? What to do about another ecclesiastic, whom a yellow journalist exposes as a homosexual? What to do about a marriage wherein the pastoral displaces the connubial? And above all, how to handle a driven, lower-class curate whose demonic zeal proves as ruinous to the public-school coziness of his fellow churchmen as to the love a spirited and sensible young woman bears him? The play has humor, suspense, exuberance, and pathos; though placed in an Anglican framework, it is more pope’s nose than curate’s egg.

When you glimpse the Spartanly pared-down but enormously suggestive scenery by Bob Crowley, the poetic projections by Wendall K. Harrington, the incisive lighting by Mark Henderson, and breathtaking direction by Richard Eyre, you worry about a sprawling cast’s and potentially parochial text’s ability to keep up. Rest assured: All fears are promptly allayed.

What is exhilarating about the writing is that every character in this vast array is a human being, foolish and fallible, but believable and pardonable. Side with whomever you choose: all but the journalist have a portion of justice and heaps of humanity going for them. In their clashes, theater catches life on the wing, whether soaring or broken. Miss it at a peril to your entertainment as a theatergoer, your education as an existential learner, your soul as a sentient and rational being.

I am at a loss, though, about how to describe this large, flawless cast. I’ve no space to analyze each individual excellence, and a mere litany of names wearies the reader. Let me say that when often irritating actors such as Josef Sommer and Michael Cumpsty, and ever delightful ones such as Brian Murray and George N. Martin, merge in magnificence, something has happened that, from Broadway to Canterbury, can pass for a miracle.