<b>EVERYBODY</b> Lorna C. Hill Theatre/Ujima Theater Company SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Through May 18
EVERYBODY Lorna C. Hill Theatre/Ujima Company

Braden Jacob-Jenkins reached back half a millennium to look at life and death.
That�s the medieval �Everyman� plays, often staged in town squares by traveling clergy to explain religion and faith to a largely illiterate population when the Catholic faith was starting to drift into the Reformation.
�Everybody� is a more current look at death and life, getting a challenging production in Ujima�s Lorna C. Hill Theatre.
Here, God (Gerald Ramsey) is reconsidering what he created and asks Death (Lisa Ludwig) to do some research with those about to face their Last Judgment.
Death introduces herself to a person waiting in line, skeptical about who she is.
It�s not that hard to scare the person facing that last mile into believing and being asked to find a friend who will accompany that person into the afterlife.
Most might be good friends but they aren�t that good, particularly when a newly uniformed Death returns and opens a curtain masking what looks like a massive fire.
All know Hell when they think they see it.
The kicker in the story is a lottery among the cast members to determine which of the characters they play in the second half of this relatively short play, requiring each character to memorize the entire script, just in case.
The people on the passage list don�t seem to object although their possible companions do.
They have reasons, good and bad, for staying behind and mourning their dead, love, time, evil, often handled in ways injecting humor into what is a series of truly, heavy discussions.
Ujima has been trying something a little different, changing the shape of the theater.
It has gone from a fairly conventional space to one much more like the Irish Classical Theater Company�s Andrews Theatre, with viewers on all sides.
This makes the story a little more human, with the friends and the doomed moving around the room to talk.
This is a look at the great personal issues of life and death, perhaps those once discussed in late night sessions in a dorm by those too young to have dealt with them.
They remain relevant.
After all, no matter how many people are within a few feet, we all die alone, a situation Jacobs-Jenkins makes clear.
The play itself is a mix of drama and philosophy, a throwback to those medieval mystery plays.
That�s why �Everybody� is such a fascinating play, the kind of production which makes people think and talk about what they saw, something clearly visible three years ago when walking out of a production at the Shaw Festival.
Director Tioga Simpson has a strong cast to work with, important because there are so many speaking roles in the play.
That means there are lots of points of view to be expressed in explaining why the friends don�t want to take that walk into the afterlife until it�s their turn.
�Everybody� is a show very much worth seeing and pondering.

A.W.