Hannah, a minister of the Episcopal Church, exclaims that she wants her windows “free of stains”. She is referring to the embellished stained glass windows in her study, although is making a deeper reference to her own unique view of God.

The Busy World is Hushed, written by Keith Bunin and directed by Mark Kilmurry, is a refreshingly new portrait of faith in the modern world, and how three individuals invest their belief in the past, the present and what they cannot see but know to be real. Hannah, played with formidable strength and light by Vanessa Downing, is not your expected minister of religion. Her view of God is uniquely her own and she won’t be influenced by most of the ‘good book’ which she flatly excuses as hypocrisy. She comes from the church that, if you read the history books, has been ordaining female ministers, blessing same sex marriages and ordaining openly homosexual bishops for years.

When Hannah receives a new Gnostic gospel to translate and write a book about, she hires Brandt (Matthew Moore) as her ghostwriter, a young gay man certainly not qualified enough for the task but possibly just what Hannah longs for. Hannah’s real son Thomas (Lee Jones) has been playing a game of disappearing for lengths of time since he was sixteen, and reappears early on in the play. Although the divide between mother and son is extreme and anguished, there is palpable love still existing. Brandt’s placement between the two is no accident, and unbeknownst to him, he will function to pull them closer and inevitably part them once again. The cast is equally matched and impressively convincing. Downing as the truly beleaguered mother striving to retain composure is moving. Moore’s Brandt is genuinely charming and heartfelt. Jones embraces his role with gusto, playing the runaway drifter that can’t seem to stand a resting place, with humour and poignancy. The three combine to deliver a piece that constantly moves and surprises, as it takes different routes than the expected, and play each moment with just the right balance of might and subtlety.

What strengthens the play as it travels along, is its detailed and well-constructed throughlines. Most affecting is each character’s search for meaning and answers from a father figure. While Brandt’s father is dying from a brain tumour, he asks inevitable questions about God’s existence, and how God can put a good person through such suffering. Thomas seeks a father that was gone before he was born. His desperate search for any scrap of information about his father leads him to scrawl through his father’s old bibles, analysing underlined sections for answers. Hannah continues her life-long relationship with a much more intangible ‘Father,’ and although she is solid in her faith, she does not claim to understand all God’s work.

Thomas (and indeed there is a connection to the original ‘doubting Thomas’) insists his mother’s faith is simply an emotional evasion. While she was pregnant, Thomas’ father, a minister, walked into the sea without explanation. Left with no answers or reasons and very nearly losing her mind, Hannah turned to her husband’s God for solice and has since made his word her life’s work. It’s an opinion that cuts straight to Hannah’s heart, however her doggedness and real love for her son keep her fighting back for her beliefs. At times it is easy to believe Thomas – Downing’s Hannah is cool and collected in the extreme. Her faith is unshakeable and unique. Sometimes I felt she should be reacting more, yet possible years of the same have made her so unflappable.

I have great admiration for Bunin’s writing as it attempts to neither persuade one to accept nor reject religion, yet it still encourages some brilliant debates about the reasons we invite religion into our lives. Both sides put up strong arguments. Hannah’s view of God is refreshing as she chooses not to accept the Bible’s contradictory representation. Instead she has her own ideal and image to pray to, using facts she can grasp on to, which explains her current obsession with the newly discovered gospel – Hannah believes what is in the gospel could be the closest anyone has got to the ‘real Jesus.’ I must admit, given Hannah’s standpoints on several controversial issues, it is at times a stretch of the imagination to believe that a minister of the church could be so radical and go as far as to discredit the bible itself. Although the Episcopal Church is regarded as one of the most enlightened faiths today, and so perhaps it is not so far from reality.

The play clinched me with its conclusion. It didn’t reach for the neat, happy, all-ends-tied wrap up. The cuts made are still felt, deeply, and true to real life, ordinary people do not bounce back so soon. The three characters are significantly altered and their intense beliefs challenged, yet we will never tap the depths of how and in what ways. This is what makes good theatre. I left with something within me that will stay with me for quite some time.