Like its unambiguously ironic title, the play leaves little in the way of metaphorical mystery. Set around 1250 A.D. in Priseaux, France, the story follows a group of struggling monks who have resorted to selling the bones of their local deceased on their newly established black market of Catholic Saints. Shipping them off to distant monasteries, the austere religious leaders pass off the extremities as divine relics with the capacity to work miracles on any passing visitor with a penny and a prayer.

 

Their customers build their religious audiences, the monks replenish their funds for the poor, and everyone goes home happy. After all, moral integrity can do little to fill a poor man’s pocket or a starving man’s stomach. As the most prudent of all the monks, Brother Martin, convincingly argues: “If we can’t do good with our faith alone, then faith alone’s no good.” With this axiom, Hollinger spins the web that the riotous antics to come attempt to untangle — or perhaps tangle even further as the corruption that the most spiritually cynical among us tend to associate with religious institutions proves, in the end, to serve a Godly purpose.