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Judas': Irreverent, often comic retelling
By Elizabeth Maupin | SENTINEL THEATER CRITIC
June 20, 2009
If you can imagine Pontius Pilate as a malevolent African-American godfather type or St. Monica as a foul-mouthed hipster, you may get an idea of the flavor of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis's extravagant take on the story of Jesus and his followers.
But if the faithful are shocked at this irreverent, often comical retelling, the more open-minded among them may also be surprised at the utter seriousness with which Guirgis treats the characters at this story's center. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot may transpose Judas and Satan to an all-too- familiar 21st-century setting, but it's only to provoke us to see it all anew.
Empty Spaces Theatre Co. grabbed hold of Guirgis last fall with Jesus Hopped the A Train, a prison drama laden with metaphor that gave the edgy little company a chance to stretch its wings. Using most of the same cast members and a dozen more, The Last Days - a co-production with <http://www.orlandosentinel.com/topic/us/connecticut/litchfield-county/river ton-PLGEO100100203170000.topic> Riverton Playground Theatre - is an even wilder and woollier ride through familiar territory that opens itself up to the emotions in deep and unexpected ways.
The scene is a courtroom in Purgatory, where a honey-tongued prosecutor (the hilarious Stephen Lima) and a grim but sexy defense attorney (Babette Garber) face off under the eyes of an impatient judge (Avis-Marie Barnes) and a ragtag jury consisting of a Nuyorican angel, a woman on life support and an everyday Joe who screwed around on his wife.
Of course, Judas (a brooding Roger Floyd) is the defendant, but for much of the trial he's center stage in a catatonic stupor, while various witnesses - from St. Peter and St. Thomas to Mother Theresa and Sigmund Freud - file in and out to attest to Judas's character and his crime.
What's mind-blowing about Guirgis's tale, especially for those who haven't spent much of their lives thinking about such things, is the way the script updates each character so that they connect to the audience.
Simon the Zealot (Lawrence Benjamin) is an unsettled soul looking to overthrow the Romans, and he thinks Judas wanted Jesus to lead the revolution. Pontius Pilate (a scary Mark Edward Smith) is an arrogant bigot
who shows up to testify in his golf clothes. Satan (the magnetic Dennis Neal) is a smooth operator, charming, combustible and smarter than anyone else around.
Director John DiDonna has the knack of attracting fine actors, and he has many on hand here, including some in very small roles: Marty Stonerock as a comical Mother Theresa, Trenell Mooring as the jive-talking St. Monica, Peg O'Keef as Judas's grief-stricken mother, Joel Warren as an ordinary guy who ends the play in an extraordinary way.
There's lots of casting against type, but that only serves to broaden the play, to make its what-ifs stretch farther toward infinity. If Judas shot Jesus in the back for a pack of Kools, as one of the characters says, what does that make him? And what does that make us?
Elizabeth Maupin can be reached at <mailto: emaupin@orlandosentinel.com > emaupin@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5426. Read her Attention Must Be Paid blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/Attention and her Arts & Letters blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/ArtsandLetters .
See for yourself
'The Last Days of Judas Iscariot'
What: Empty Spaces Theatre Co./Riverton Playground Theatre production of
Stephen Adly Guirgis play.
Where: Mandell Studio Theater, Lowndes Shakespeare Center, 812 E. Rollins
St., Orlando.
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, through June 28.
Cost: $20 general, $15 seniors and students (cash only at door).
Call: 407-328-9005.
Online: Redchairproject.com .
The ultimate traitor
By Laura Stewart Orlando Weekly The ultimate traitor In a time of doubt and millennial fears, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot , the Empty Spaces Theatre Co.'s new production of Stephen Adly Guirgis's 2005 off-Broadway hit, offers a different perspective: absolute despair, shot through with gritty humor and, ultimately, hope. Expressing all that, especially through the mythical trial of a character known for betraying Jesus to the Romans and causing his crucifixion, is a challenge. But it's one director John DiDonna (in collaboration with Seth Kubersky) and his outstanding cast met and more than mastered. Even without hilarious one-liners and more subtle jokes that reflect a wide range of human failings, Judas Iscariot would be a sensation. If its arguments appear to revolve around the classic God-versus-Satan theme, its methods and stunningly raw, moving conclusion do not. From the first scene, when Judas' lawyers begin their battle for his soul in a hellishly lit “purgatory” courtroom, calling on the forces of good and evil, the large cast handles their dense, multilayered roles nimbly. As one witness after another appears, to laughs and appreciative groans, a new view of Judas takes shape. Especially vivid are St. Monica, portrayed as a B-girl (Trenell Mooring) who cracks streetwise as prim defense attorney Fabiana Aziza Cunningham (Babette Garber, tense and hectoring) demands that the judge (played with a witty but workable gender twist by Avis Marie Barnes) hear her case, and the smooth, seductive Satan (a superbly slimy Dennis Neal), as cool as he can be under any kind of cross-examination. The glib and smarmy prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Stephen Lima) and a series of sharply sketched witnesses play against Cunningham's literally divine defense, weaving together the sad story of Judas (Roger Floyd, in a dizzyingly diverse series of emotional outbursts). Slumped on the courtroom floor, catatonic after his suicide and 2,000 years in the ninth circle of hell, Judas embodies both his traditional sinister role and the benign view that emerged recently, through the “lost gospels” that show Judas as merely carrying out Jesus' desire to shed his mortal coil, at his request. Prosecutor El-Fayoumy is good-natured enough, though obsequious to the delightfully egocentric Mother Theresa (Marty Stonerock) and poking fun at Sigmund Freud (Pat Ward, complete with cigar). But the prosecutor is the ideal foil for shrill, predatory Cunningham, just as a bland character present in every scene turns out to be a perfect foil for all of the characters in the play. We wonder the identity of the nameless person – quietly sweeping the floor, serving wine or shouldering Pontius Pilate's golf bag like a cross – who rounds out and defuses Judas' numb negativity. When Jesus Christ (Alexis Jackson) finally speaks, it is in the simplest, most accepting terms. But the words cut through the play's intricate, brilliant fabric and suggest that the problem may not be the silence of God, but man's inability to listen. |
Al Pergande ("Charles F. Gauze") Ink19.com
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
By Stephen Adly Guigis
Directed by John DiDonna
Starring Avis Marie Barnes, Babette Garber, Stephen Lima, Roger Floyd
Empty Spaces Theatre Company
Lowndes Shakespeare Center, Orlando FL
After a good parochial education and years of studying Joseph Campbell and the Classical Philosophers, the fundamental doctrines of Christianity still seem to me a convolved, self-conflicting mess. If you have never recognized the fundamental incompatibility of Omniscience (I can see everything everywhere past present and future) and Omnipotence (I can make anything happen, anywhere, anytime) you might find some solace in this wordy and theologically wobbly piece of surrealism. And you WILL find some of Orlando's highest power talent chewing on meaty rolls as hard as the debate between Free Will and Determinism.
Henrietta Iscariot (Peg O'Keefe) just buried her son Judas in shame, mourning that no parent should have to bury their child. She refuses the four small stones left on top of his grave, thus symbolically rejecting the power of the Judaic god YHWH. We descend from her Potter's Field to a court room in Purgatory where Judge Frank Littlefield (Barnes) presides. She's feisty and officious, and steadily rejects a variety of writs, all intended to get various human mega-sinners out of Hell and into Heaven, or at least into a karmic work release program. Irish gypsy lawyer Fabiana Aziza Cunningham (Garber) argues for the case of Judas, (Floyd) a now cationic resident of the ninth ring of hell. It takes the aid of streetwise nudge St. Monica (Trennel Mooring) to get on the divine docket, and then we enter the real center of the story - an oddly structured retrial of Judas, with various ancient and contemporary figures who all chime in the merits of the conviction. In the end, we find Jesus (Alexis Jackson) simply loves all, and while “Faith” is offhandedly referred to, it's transubstantiated into a “Lack of Despair” as the ticket into the pearly gates.
Ok, all of this feels like religion as seen thorough the eyes of 20th century pop culture, but the performances are nearly all perfect. The gloomy, teary O'Keefe, the sassy and willful Barnes, and the dripping-with-depression Floyd all anchor the action, but the supporting cast makes this sing. Stephen Lima is the vaguely Arabic and very oily prosecutor (El-Fayoumy). He brown noses his way through the trial as he repeatedly attempts to seduce the defense lawyer Cunningham. Lawrence Benjamin was fine as Julius the Bailiff, but became truly scary when he appears as a Black Panther version of Simon the Zealot. Valensky Sylvain cut an elegant figure as the gentle giant St. Matthew, and Satan even appears in the form of Dennis Neal, the always suave and snappy dresser with a violent temper lurking under that Armani coat.
While “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” doesn't cover every single facet of Judas's guilt or innocence, it leads you around the block several times and leaves you with a spinning head in the bad part of town, wearing little more than your philosophical undies and one high heel. Some of the modern philosophers just seemed to elongate the story - while I love Marty Stonerock's Palm Beach maven Gloria, her Mother Theresa segment dragged on and mostly points out that even the canonized aren't perfect. Sigmund Freud (Pat Ward) drew some well deserved laughs but again, his modern and no longer fashionable psychoanalysis added little to understanding what prompted Judas.
If you have a strong faith, whether in the acceptance of the divine, or the conviction there ain't no such thing, you will likely make it thorough this journey unscathed. If you're sitting on a fence, I expect you'll have barbed wire marks in your metaphysical behind when you walk out. You can chase these arguments around forever, or you can pick and choose and sign up for an arbitrary position and worship in the Church of Your Choice. Here's the question the author ignores: Was Judas the creepiest little sneak to ever walk the earth, or did he take the real fall for Christianity, voluntarily entering and remaining in Hell so the rest of us could feel better on Sunday morning? There's heresy lurking here, the kind that gets you burned at the stake. Tread carefully…