There’s no doubt that Stephen Adly Guirgis has the gift of the gab. His plays luxuriate in such titles as ‘In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings’ and ‘Jesus Hopped the “A” Train’. Now Rupert Goold, currently the hottest director around, has got his hands on the playwright’s epic quest to understand why, if God is merciful, Judas Iscariot’s fate was so terrible. ‘If my son sits in Hell,’ cries his mother, ‘There is no God.’ We know that after the betrayal, Judas despaired and hanged himself, but what happened next? Here, he is shown languishing in a catatonic state in downtown Purgatory.
Guirgis presents a familiar line-up including Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Satan, Pontius Pilate and… Freud. The flashy, poetic street language is not unusual either; it’s the combination that’s startling and often humorous. Who expects St Monica, mother of St Augustine, to say ‘I birthed the mothahfuckah’ or St Matthew to admit that he was ‘a scumbag’?
Gould relishes Guirgis’ theatrical energy and ability to pull a surprise as the scene is set for a court case in which Susan Lynch’s fiery Fabiana Aziza Cunningham represents Judas against Mark Lockyer’s eyebrow-wriggling, sycophantic Yusef El-Fayoumy. As one witness follows another what emerges is that everyone has a point of view and that free will is more complicated than one might think. Douglas Henshall exudes charisma and danger as Satan – smartly dressed in a Gucci jacket – who suggests that we are far freer than we imagine. Together, the superb cast and Guirgis’ bold imagination more than make up for the occasional, self-indulgent ramble.
Great acting, good production - but the whole adds up to much less than the sum of its parts. It rambles, and everyone shouts so loud that the actors will deserve free voice recuperation treatment by the end of the run. And Guirgis may have had a Jesuit to brief him but how do you do a play about Judas without any reference to the redemption myth?
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Great acting, good production - but the whole adds up to much less than the sum of its parts. It rambles, and everyone shouts so loud that the actors will deserve free voice recuperation treatment by the end of the run. And Guirgis may have had a Jesuit to brief him but how do you do a play about Judas without any reference to the redemption myth?