If ever there’s a play that better lays bare the inner life of a man of the cloth who prays and preys, it’s going to have to be measured against this hard-hitting script.

 

As directed by David Moretti, Constructive Fictions is an ingenious work of stagecraft.

Matty Griffiths as Freundel delivers a remarkably nuanced performance. Even as the Rabbi is vainly complaining of his circumstances, egoistically explaining his conduct, plaintively seeking exoneration without an ounce of empathy for those he violated, Griffiths achieves a persona and presence that allow us to see not just through the man but deep inside him. As embodied by Griffiths, Freundel is by no means a sympathetic character but he is a comprehensible and decidedly recognizable one.