The production is better than the play with Shelterhouse opener God's Man in Texas, a tale of Old Time Religion as practiced at the world's largest Baptist dynasty deep in the heart of Houston.

        I wasn't a fan of Texas when it debuted at the Humana Festival of New American Plays a couple of years back, and with this production my issues remain the same.

        Playwright David Rambo's script is by the book, and not The Good Book. His book is much smaller — TV Guide. The first act mixes Sunday morning television ministry with sitcom interludes. The second act switches to an episode of Touched by an Angel. Like bad television, Mr. Rambo's sin is that he never surprises. Frankly, I want to be surprised by Shelterhouse shows.

        Dr. Jeremiah Mears (Robert Elliott) is being “auditioned” for the role of pastor at Rock Baptist, a massive religious corporation that includes pre-K through college, a dinner theater, hotels and a bowling alley.

        The octogenarian pastor Gottschall, a wonderfully magisterial William Cain, wasn't informed about the search committee, and he is, to say the least, resentful.

        The first act is Jerry's four Sundays of tryouts on the pulpit where he fine-tunes his style of preaching (scholarly, folksy, deeply personal) to win the gig.

        These are interspersed with lots of backstage action in the Ministers' Room where twitchy, phlegmy Hugo (Bob Burrus), a born-again former alcoholic/addict, says things like, “This is the Baptist Super Bowl, and you're standing in God's locker room.” (How funny you find this will tell you whether Texas is your show.)

        In the second act Jerry has won the title “co-pastor,” and the predictable struggle between old and new is under way even as Hugo is handed a Big Issue that brings undercurrents to the surface.

        Mr. Rambo is concerned with father-and-son themes but doesn't quite know what to do with them. Gottschall doesn't have a son; Jerry has two. It turns out Hugo has one, whom he didn't know about until the second act. Jerry and Hugo were both abandoned by their fathers but saved by "Our Father.'

        Late in the action Jerry accuses Gottschall of wanting him for a son, but there had been no sign of it during the course of the play.

        Mr. Rambo's observations on the mega-ministry make for some good debating points and laughs, but he doesn't reach beyond common perceptions. He's fortunate to have a production that raises his work to near-significance.

        Robert Elliott finds every possible complexity of Jerry's character — the genuine man of God who is nevertheless corruptible — and embodies him so successfully that he even carries off the unlikely finale.

        Set designer Klara Zieglerova has managed to squish a Crystal Cathedral feel into the tiny Shelterhouse performing space with a huge mirrored cross overhead and Genesis-inspired walls, although the full effect only works from the back rows of the center section. If that's not where you're sitting, take a look during intermission.

        God's Man in Texas, through Oct. 21, Playhouse in the Park, 421-3888.

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