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THE AMEN CORNER
Mia Ellis has many roles to fill in Shakespeare Theatre’s production of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner.  She is Reverend Margaret, the inspired pastor of a struggling congregation in Harlem. She is the wife of Luke (Chike Johnson), a shabby musician husband who re-enters her life ten years later as he is dying.  She is mother to David (Antonio Michael Woodard),  their teenage son who is struggling with how to live his own life.
There are moments when Margaret is like Greek tragic figure with her entrenched flaw of her righteousness that she has been set apart by God.As one so chosen  who does God’s will in all circumstances. she looms like an Old Testament prophet, her message flowing  in  her passionate sermons from her pulpit through the congregation, inspiring spectacular singing and dancing.   She maintains her position in divisive meetings with the church elders in her kitchen on how they should conduct their lives and make employment choices.  Exchanges with her devoted sister Odessa (Harriett D. Foy), reprimands to her son  and bitter encounters with Luke —all are occasions for her to repeat her unaltered devotion to God.
E. Faye Butler is Sister Moore, one of the elders of the Church.  She is counter to Margaret in every way, the ideal leader of the chorus.  Butler has a powerful voice  matched by her power in voicing reasons why the congregation should vote to oust Margaret.  
Margaret’s strong  faith rooted in blinding hubris does not flinch when confronted with human conditions that are too painful to explain otherwise.  Jasmine M. Bush as  Ida Jackson, a young woman in great suffering, has seen her baby die, despite Margaret’s exhortation to pray to God.  She confronts Margaret with the eternal question: Why? Margaret bypasses compassion, repeating her sermon message like a broken record in this heart wrenching moment. While Ida’s experience mirrors Margaret’s own of  losing a baby, her response is totally opposite.  Ida will reject God but stick with her husband unlike Margaret who left Luke after the death of her baby daughter took up the role of pastor.
Words rising from  James Baldwin’s writing set with music  rooted in traditional  spirituals, make all these characters  with  their faith and their failings most real.  As personal losses and crisis continue to mount — Luke dies, David leaves, and the congregation readies to vote to remove her—the realization that religion is not an excuse to be blind to struggles of life and love can no longer be covered in reciting platitudes.  
Whatever her future might come to be, The Amen Corner  ends  on a note worthy of grand opera.   Margaret  unmasked  mounts the steps of the altar,  repeating ’‘To love the Lord is to love all His children—all of them, everyone!—and suffer with them and rejoice with them and never count the cost!’’ 
The Amen Corner— ageless forms of theater and timely in its telling—now at the Shakespeare Theatre, Washington DC  to March 15, 2020.

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