Red Theater presents the world premiere of Church Hurt by Brunne Frauenhoffer

Mar (Sara Sadjadi) has had a rough few years. She broke up with her long-term girlfriend, culminated a few years of alcoholism with a DUI, and has no recourse but to move back home and reckon with her broken heart and sobriety. Home is her unapproving mother’s basement in a small town in Illinois.

As many do when times are desperate, Mar turns to her childhood church, a megachurch called The Summit. They’ve got youth groups and old groups, dance groups and worship bands, lock-ins and Sunday school and dawn bible study and Wednesday Worship and probably noon and dinner bible study too. There’s a sandy baptism pond in the parking lot, there are committees and volunteers and staff – there are even other campuses, that probably have all of the above and some other stuff too. The Summit, in the years since Mar has been gone, is thriving. Or at least, so say Mar’s childhood best friends, Faith (Alice Wu) and Julie (Laura Michele Erle).

Mar does what she has to do to work her way back into the community she thought she had left behind for good, and Julie and Faith welcome her with open arms, Julie is especially delighted to have Mar back, since in the intervening years she has come out as ebulliently bisexual and would love a gay buddy. Erle’s performance is so guileless and sincere that it’s hard to believe she even knows there’s an audience. Her earnest delivery is perfect for Sadjadi’s more world-weary, suspicious straight-man. Wu’s Alice is the odd man out. Mar came out as gay early on and took the brunt of the homophobia and ignorance of her family and friends but also had that patina of cool rebel’s are often colored with. Julie burrowed into scripture and found a place of acceptance for her identity, that she seems to think sheer, cheerful outspokenness will gently nudge her community into as well.  But Alice never left the church or deviated from its ideals. She works there now in PR and is desperately keeping up appearances while she nurses a broken heart and secret shame.

A hallmark of Red Theater is the beautiful exercise in minimalism of the set. Rose Johnson (scenic designer) and Amina Gilbert (lighting) created the suggested of a wood paneled and austere megachurch with the equivalent of line drawings. The cast of three weave in and out of a stark, clean stage with a back lit, massive cross in the center – the church once being the center of all their lives and even now, at the center of their identities – whether they like it or not.

Childhood friendships like theirs are often more reminiscent of family, there is always love and longing for closeness but not necessarily ease of companionship, shared interests or even shared values. Wu’s Alice in particular, is desperate for closeness and intimacy, but is so tightly wound around her own expectations, fed to her from a lifetime at church, that she tacitly requires her friends to meet those same expectations for her. Sadjadi’s Mar is a veteran of failed expectations, and therefore more able to walk a tightrope between her public persona and her private identity – but that also keeps her huddled into herself, unable to let go of the demons that got her here. Erle’s Julie is an eternal optimist, insisting, as only a well-meaning and naïve person can, that everyone just needs to read the bible a little more closely and then we’d all just get along. Director Jessica Love, as she did with last year’s The Pilon, turns the spotlight on each woman’s desire to connect with the other, and their equally great fear of rejection.

The conversations between them all are laugh out loud funny and often a thoughtful exploration of how to exist in a world where the definition of what is an acceptable identity is extremely narrow. There is no easy answer to those questions, and playwright Brynne Frauenhoffer doesn’t offer any. Instead, for ninety minutes, we watch three people grapple with their reality and what they wish their reality could be, and, perhaps, find some companionship in the meantime.

Recommended

Reviewed by Alina C. Hevia

Presented at The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa Ave. Saturday, October 24 – Saturday, November 21, 2026. Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, & Saturdays@ 7:30P, Sundays @ 3P

Saturday October 31 @ 3P; Wednesday, November 11 @ 7:30P

Tickets are available now at www.redtheater.org for $35, student and artist tickets are $10 have a limited availability nightly. Purchasing a ticket at our $50 pay-it-forward tier helps us sustain accessibility efforts.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.