Christmas in Hell

"We're muy blended," Serrano joked at the script's read-through, when the family members got their first look at each other three months ago.

"I can't talk right now. I'm at church. I'm getting a bullet hole put on my head," Craig A. Hampton says into his cell phone as he waits for his turn onstage at rehearsal. His deep baritone makes his voice audible from every corner of the massive sanctuary as he lounges in one of the folding church seats, cherry-flavored blood flowing from a volcanic wound above his right eye.

By day, Hampton is the chief steward of the local AFL-CIO chapter that represents federal Social Security Administration employees. Tonight, though, he is the Antichrist. Last year, he was Grandpa. The year before, he played the Pastor.

The year before that, he was a sinner slowly sinking back into the clutches of cocaine. Hampton sports sparkling pinky rings and loops of gold chains. He's divorced; his two daughters' names are tattooed over his heart. Getting through this hard exterior took nothing less than indoor fireworks.

A friend had suggested he visit the church, so Hampton took his daughters to the 11 a.m. service on Father's Day in 2002.

"The sermon was good, but I don't remember what it was about. The singing was good, but I don't remember what songs they sang," Hampton says. Then the church's dance troupe took the stage and, as they froze in place at the end of the routine, pyrotechnics shot from the stage.

"I was, like, this is for me. They're doing something that could burn down this multimillion-dollar building, and they don't care, because it's not about that," he says.

Hampton, who just turned 50, hasn't had an easy life. Humor is his defense mechanism, a necessary survival tool for a short, light-skinned black man growing up in Kansas City. His mother had him when she was 13 and later left him with his grandparents, who raised him.

Hampton took up drama in college because one of his theater friends had all the good drugs. His grandfather had been a jazz singer during the heyday of 18th and Vine, and Hampton went on to perform at theaters in the River Quay (now the River Market). With this background, he was immediately drawn to Sheffield's annual Christmas performance.

He feared that he would be cast as a villain. He needed just the opposite in his life. But how else could the director cast a bassoon-voiced, diamond-studded stranger?

Charlotte Laterra, Tribulation's grandmotherly director, saw something else in Hampton. She surprised him by casting him as the Pastor that first year.

Laterra is one of those who joined the church after seeing Tribulation Christmas, when her daughter got two tickets from a co-worker 24 years ago. During the opening scene, when soldiers swarm through the audience with guns, Laterra recalls, she turned to her daughter and whispered, "This is the strangest place. As soon as there's an intermission, we're out of here." It's no coincidence that the play has no intermission.

At this early rehearsal, Laterra approaches Hampton, who tells her he's excited about his role as the Antichrist -- but not too excited. It's not a part you want to get too into. Since he learned he'd be playing the villain, he's been wondering aloud whether there's some way to get the temperature in the sanctuary to drop 10 degrees at his entrance.

"Have you thought about your part?" Laterra asks. "What do you imagine yourself wearing? I'll give you a hint: It's not black."

Hampton is silent for a moment. "I was thinking -- kind of a sharkskin number?" Laterra nods knowingly. "Yeah, like an Armani, gray sharkskin," he says, warming up.

"And the shirt underneath?" Laterra asks. "I'll tell you, it's not red."

"Blue?"

She nods.

"Blue shirt and tie, both?"

She smiles and nods again. A girl sitting next to Hampton asks, "Why you get to dress like a pimp?"

"Well, the character is kind of like a pimp," Hampton answers. "It's the same principle."

This year, the Antichrist and Satan are both played by black men. In the past, Satan has been played by a black woman. Hampton says he's been asked why the evil characters can be played by African-Americans but the part of Jesus can't.

"I would like to see it," Hampton says. "I don't think it would be me, because historically, they like their Jesuses tall."

Six-time Trib veteran Glen Brown, who plays the Pastor in this year's show, says it comes down to church politics. To explain, he offers an anecdote: During the monologue in which he preaches at Dave and Lisa to accept Jesus before it's too late, the Pastor compares Jesus to other spiritual leaders, like Mohammed, Buddha and Confucius. "You go to the grave of Mohammed, and he's still there," the line reads. "You go to the grave of Buddha, and he's still there.... There's only one God who can save your sin-sick soul, and his name is Jesus Christ."

Years ago, Brown says, that monologue included Mormon founder Joseph Smith. "It was taken out because we're trying to reach everyone, and though there aren't a lot of Mormons in this direct area, there are a lot right over the hill [in Independence]," Brown says. "I couldn't understand why we were cutting the Mormons some slack, if we believe it's a cult, as we say. But we cut it. Sometimes people can get [Westlake's] ear, and some things change."