By Daniel Buckwalter

The question hangs: Where is God — or any form of Divine intervention — present in the play, A Case for the Existence of God?

True, the award-winning play, written by Samuel D. Hunter and premiered in 2022, makes no mention of God, and many who have seen the play performed at Oregon Contemporary Theatre have believed that no matter of deity exists in the play.

I beg to differ. A Case for the Existence of God is a glorious statement of how love for your neighbor — no matter how clumsily or stiffly it starts, no matter your religious beliefs or non-beliefs — can transcend the valleys of intense hell that we all walk through in life. It is a statement of how simple, non-sexual love, of listening to the person in front of you with intention, can ease a person’s burden in their darkest time, as well as yourself.

Make no mistake, in A Case for the Existence of God, Ryan (actor Chauncey Mauney) and Keith (Jonathan Thompson), are both walking through their own valleys of hell, and their unlikely friendship, clumsy and stiff at the beginning, is inspiring at play’s end.

Ryan is your everyday man from Twin Falls, Idaho, a semi-popular presence in high school who now works at a yogurt factory and wants to buy 12 acres outside of town and a thread of his family history, and he has to borrow money to do it. He comes from a family rife with mental illness and addiction, and, he explains, “Money gives me a reason to exist.”

Keith is a mortgage broker — “I am not a mortgage lender,” he emphasizes — who takes the time and effort (and just half of any future commission) to help Ryan in his quest. The maze of acronyms and numbers in the proposed contracts are befuddling to Ryan, but they are a second language to Keith.

Keith also grew up in Twin Falls — Black and gay. Isolated as he was in this context, his father is an attorney who afforded young Keith experiences in Europe, allowing him the chance to explore and grow. Keith would go on to earn degrees in early music and English, before becoming a mortgage broker.

The two men have three things in common. First and foremost, they are dearly in love with the nearly two-year-old girls each is raising. They had met, or so it seemed, at a daycare each child was signed up for, and they bond over that.

Second, each is in danger of losing their girls. For Ryan, it’s divorce, and the grim possibility of losing custody of Christa. For Keith, who has been fostering for almost two years, it’s the equally grim prospect of losing Willa to the mother’s aunt.

Third, they went to the same high school in Twin Falls at the same time, something Keith points out. Ryan, the semi-popular presence in high school, ridiculed a T-shirt Keith’s father had bought for him. Keith remembers this well; Ryan has no recollection of it.

That third point, I think, is the axis of A Case for the Existence of God. These are two men who, on the surface, have nothing in common in our rigid societal compartments. Ryan, white and heterosexual in Twin Falls, is open about his feelings almost to a fault. Keith, Black and gay in Twin Falls, is guarded. He grudgingly opens up as the play unfolds. Both men acknowledge generational pain and have to work hard to simply listen with intention to the other, the very hallmark of spiritual life.

A Case for the Existence of God is a sad and profound play, beautifully written, and Mauney and Thompson give first-rate, nuanced performances. Craig Willis is the director, and it has four more performances at OCT, April 30 through May 3.

I strongly encourage anyone who has not seen it to make the effort to take it in and absorb its lessons in love and loss. It is raw, real and worth it.

Final four performances of A Case for the Existence of God

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, April 30 and May 1 and 2; and 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 3

Where: Oregon Contemporary Theatre, 194 W. Broadway, downtown Eugene

Ticket information: octheatre.org