Savior (Griffin) ★★★★

Written by Happy Feraren. Griffin Theatre Co. Belvoir Downstairs Theatre. 16 May – 14 Jun, 2026.

Jesus — or is that J.E.S.U.S. — takes the wheel in Happy Feraren’s deliciously funny disaster comedy Savior, which looks at the gap between good intentions and best practices.

Michelle (Chrissy Mae Valentine) works for an American NGO called SAVIOR, helping to coordinate relief efforts after a natural disaster. From the luxury of a five-star hotel room, she is doing the work of the LORD (the Lead Officer for Revenue Development), reporting to white tech-bro Joe, her personal JESUS (Joint Emergency Systems & Uplift Strategist, played by Michael Whalley).

When her best friend Janna (Chaye Mogg), out of boredom, makes Michelle a fake Tinder profile, she matches with the thoughtfully messianic Joe. Can Michelle’s hero-worship become romance? And what about poor Jobert (Mark Paguio), stuck on the ground in Tacloban handing out aid packages while Michelle is having a poolside date-slash-offsite-team-update with Joe?

Rarely has a white saviour complex been so literal. Feraren relishes in using Christian iconography to drive home the message of self-ordained Westerners swooping in to help “victims” while raising millions of dollars those same people will never see. Over 90 minutes she aims her satire at everyone, mocking the fetishisation of white people (“Is he hot, or just white?”), the idolisation of westerners, and the transubstantiation of greed into altruism — and vice versa. Throw in some political corruption, corporate inhumanity, and tone-deaf Big Tech, and you’ve got yourself a solid, modern comedy.

Kenneth Moraleda directs with precise timing, keeping the jokes rolling. The cast make a decadent feast of the witty dialogue and awkward situations — never stretching or screeching to make the comedy land. Mogg’s scrappy, chaotic Janna is a delight, a fantastic counterweight to the serious and yearning Michelle. Whalley’s Joe (and assorted other white guys) is a milky cocktail of clueless earnestness and blithe privilege. Paguio manages to turn on a dime as the long-suffering Jobert, moving from waifer-thin politeness to camp glee to finally devastating grief. Together they keep the sitcom rhythms humming.

One of the joys of Griffin’s takeover of Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre is seeing the space used to its maximum potential, and Savior continues that trend. On a chilly evening, the stacked lighting rig warms the place up nicely (strong work from BROCKMAN), Hailley Hunt’s set design has some neat tricks up its sleeve and DOBBY’s sound design gives the small space texture. Some scene changes take time, but the show earns more than enough goodwill to carry you through the pauses.

The satire itself is however relatively thin. Feraren is painting with a broad brush — her critique of white saviours doesn’t wrestle with the murky, complex web of incentives, needs, and motivations that make up the world of international aid. Savior flirts with grey areas but doesn’t commit to any of them; it is a comedy first and foremost (and a damn funny one at that), content to echo easy truisms rather than dive into messy truths.

And if the church-baiting humour gives you pause, rest easy: Feraren is mocking blind faith in organisations, not in God. The script stops well short of blasphemy — give or take a stigmata or two.

Taken purely as a comedy, Savior serves up ecstatic bliss. It may be reciting a familiar self-mocking liturgy for comfortable progressive audiences, but it’s doing so in fine voice. The show has the freshness you want from a new work, and this quartet of performers will keep you giggling for 90 minutes straight.