As It Is in Heaven (play)

Attending the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1995, where her first plays were produced, Hutton saw a play about Scottish female farm workers that intrigued her and inspired her to seek an American equivalent to its characters.{{cite news |last1=Lacher |first1=Irene |title=Shakers and angels: From unusual material, a playwright sought simplicity and larger truths |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-apr-02-et-lacher2-story.html |access-date=19 September 2018 |work=Los Angeles Times |date=April 2, 2003}} Hutton wrote the play after visiting the Pleasant Hill Shaker Village near Harrodsburg, Kentucky, a restored community that the Shakers occupied for more than a century. For her play about a pre-Civil War Shaker community in which several young women claim to see celestial visions, she did three years of research. One of the startling discoveries she made was that the Kentucky community whose history she was studying had contained several distant relatives of hers, with the same surname.

A work with an all-female cast, As It Is in Heaven was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2001.{{cite news |last1=Maupin |first1=Elizabeth |title='Accidental playwright' returns to area with 'See Rock City' |url=https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2006/04/28/accidental-playwright-returns-to-area-with-see-rock-city/ |access-date=17 October 2019 |work=Orlando Sentinel |date=April 28, 2006}} A production was scheduled to open at off-Broadway’s 78th Street Theatre Lab in New York City on September 13 of that year. Two days prior, the September 11 attacks occurred, and on that night, the cast members responded by rehearsing the Shaker hymns performed in the play. The production later opened as planned. In 2008, the play was performed in Shakertown, in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, the place that had first inspired it,{{cite web |last1=Copley |first1=Rich |title=Play Back |url=https://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/performing-arts/article43967298.html |website=Lexgo |date=May 25, 2008 |accessdate=19 September 2018}} and it was revived in New York in 2011.{{cite news |last1=Gates |first1=Anita |title=A Striking, Gentle Portrait of a Shaker Community |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/theater/reviews/as-it-is-in-heaven-at-the-cherry-lane-review.html |accessdate=17 October 2019 |work=The New York Times |date=May 29, 2011}}

The songs used were (as requested by the author) to be sung a cappella.

The work has been well-received by critics. Calling Hutton "one of the most richly humane voices in contemporary theater,"{{cite news |last1=Foley |first1=F. Kathleen |title=A blissful respite from the usual stage business |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-feb-28-et-foley28-story.html |access-date=17 October 2019 |work=Los Angeles Times |date=February 28, 2003}} F. Kathleen Foley of Los Angeles Times described As It Is in Heaven as “amusing, intellectually stimulating and moving – a beautifully crafted piece that will endure.” The critic of The Village Voice, Alexis Soloski, noted that "the scenes of the women working and living together are wonderful for their very Shaker-like qualities: simplicity, unpretentiousness, attention to detail," although Soloski claims that the playwright "weaves in a dramatic arc that never seems as finely worked as the rest of the play." Anita Gates in The New York Times, reviewing the New York revival, described As It Is in Heaven as a "modest, strangely moving one-act," which "is also an unexpected patchwork of high and low cultural influences," including The Age of Innocence, The Crucible and even The Book of Mormon.

American Theatre Web said that "Hutton... once again looks into a slice of Americana... while showing that even a 'utopian' existence such as the Shakers' was not without complications... Hutton asks some universal questions about the nature of community and belief that are timeless and also prove to be good fodder for storytelling on stage... As It Is in Heaven contains a story that deserves to be told." A review on TheaterMania.com stated that "What Hutton does that is so fascinating is to show us people who appear to be the very picture of goodness and brings out their eccentricities and frailties. [She] is excellent at drawing comedy from the situation... to its satisfying and inspiring conclusion".{{cite web |last1=Pierce |first1=Brooke |title=As It Is In Heaven |url=https://www.theatermania.com/new-york/reviews/as-it-is-in-heaven_1675.html |website=theatermania.com |publisher=TheaterMania |date=27 September 2001 |accessdate=17 October 2019}}

{{reflist}}

• [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-apr-02-et-lacher2-story.html Shakers and angels] (Los Angeles Times)
• [http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/asitisinheaven.htm Theater Review on American Music Preservation]

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Category:Off-Broadway plays

Category:American plays

Category:2001 plays

Category:Plays set in Kentucky

Category:Shaker music

Category:Mercer County, Kentucky