A tale of grief and faith ignites in Theater J’s ‘Moses’

A snowman wearing a dead child’s yarmulke. A Honda Civic’s hazard lights, blinking in the snow. Pineapple Danish served in a tattoo parlor. Such vivid images lend a ring-true distinctiveness to “Moses,” a rewardingly unpredictable one-person play about grief and faith.

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Written by Michele Lowe and deftly performed in its world-premiere run at Theater J by Grant Harrison, “Moses” touches on profound issues: self-forgiveness, the human-divine relationship and whether pain is better than emotional numbness. But what makes the play most compelling — at least until its maudlin final moments — is its idiosyncratic storytelling, bolstered by those vivid details and the erratic behavior of the protagonist, Moses Schneider.