A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant is a surprisingly mild look at the controversial religion (some would say “cult”) headquartered in Clearwater and boasting such famous devotees as John Travolta and Tom Cruise. Purporting to tell us the story of its founder L. Ron Hubbard from his own point of view, it takes a gentle tongue-in-cheek attitude for most of its length, and never really dramatizes any of the abuses of which Scientology has been accused. True, they’re mentioned a few times – especially in the hour’s latter half – but in the theater it’s what’s enacted that has the most weight, and Pageant regularly fails to show us anything like the brainwashing or kidnapping that’s been alleged against the religion.
What we get instead are songs that poke harmless fun at Hubbard’s self-importance, bits of biography that show Hubbard as a seeker like Buddha or Socrates, and an introduction to such Hubbardian concepts as “engrams,” “thetans” and “the reactive mind.” It’s clear enough that writer Kyle Jarrow (working from a concept by Alex Timbers) wants us to be skeptics, but Pageant is so polite, its ultimate intent is hard to fathom. There are even moments when it feels as if the play is promoting Scientology.
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2010.