Reviews

The Irish Timesexamines the latest goings-on in the arts world

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Stephen Adly Guirgis’s dense courtroom drama is set in a corner of purgatory called Hope, where Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Jesus, is being held up for re-trial. It is the whole history of Christianity, however, that is being brought before the prosecution; this is “The Kingdom of Heaven and Earth” versus religious scepticism.

Guirgis’s Hope is located somewhere near the hood in downtown New York, and is populated by gangstas, rappers, Italian Micks, Egyptian sex-maniacs, pizza-dealing Jews, and, well, Sigmund Freud. The contemporary flavour of the characterisation – Santa “Motherfuckin’” Monica, Pontius Pilate the Pimp – may seem glib, but there is some sophisticated theological argument going on underneath the hilarious, entertaining absurdity.

If God is all forgiving, Guirgis asks, why is Judas condemned to Hell? If God’s love is conditional, is the very fabric of Christianity not inherently flawed? With the help of designer Kara Zeigon, Matt Torney’s able production envisions limbo as a dusty, otherworldly place, and he exerts a firm hand over the unwieldy three hours of material that Guirgis’s script provides. Torney’s success is enabled by a series of cameos that his brilliant cast offers, as they slip in and out of several roles like summoned souls.

There’s the irreverent Latina mother-of-the-nags Saint Monica, all whass’ups and dreadlocks in Kate Brennan’s chameleon approach; the gung-ho angel of God, Gloria, played by Hilary O’Shaughnessy, who turns up unrecognisably, physically folded, as a deaf Mother Teresa; and the obsequious Egyptian attorney Yusef El-Fayoumey (Michael Glenn Murphy), who, despite drifting between the Scottish Highlands and the Middle East in his vocal performance, is responsible for many of the production’s comic coups. Well, almost, because he has Will Irvine’s suave, seductive Satan to compete with, whose sophisticated ease and ass-kicking defence reminds of the central flaw of Christian thinking: that the devil’s tongue is sometimes more persuasive than God’s.

That the production remains somewhat unsatisfactory in its abrupt conclusion is no fault of Torney’s or the actors responsible for creating the final tableau; John Cronin and Jose Miguel Jimenez are given the least interesting roles as Judas and Jesus respectively. The real problem is that Guirgis’s script, as provocative and gripping as it is, is ultimately inconclusive, and the flat final scene, which retreats to an easy, humanistic, sentimental position that leaves an audience wondering whether the alternative philosophies offered weren’t all just hot air.

Runs until July 18th

SARA KEATING

Big Maggie

Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork

The good intentions supporting the Everyman Palace Theatre and CADA Productions collaboration in the presentation of Big Maggie by John B Keane are evident in the clean-cut design by Johanna Connor, the management of groups as well as timing by director Pat Talbot and the high-voltage commitment of Catherine Mahon-Buckley in the title role.

Good intentions in drama, however, also need a good play, and this is one of Keane’s worst. Whatever about its early popularity, its apparent pseudo-sexual motivations now seem both sordid and unproven. The newly widowed Maggie Polpin tears her young family into shreds in order to avenge years of marital infidelity, men in general and her late husband in particular. Aborting the hopes and presumptions of her children and lashing her vituperative tongue around the expectations of her community is Maggie’s way of reaching a life of single blessedness.

The quality of the dialogue is what almost redeems the nonsense which passes for character development; the speed of the repartee, and Mahon-Buckley’s control of it, blend farce and pantomime in the widow’s destruction of her family. Understandably hysterical, the reactions of the rest of the hard-working cast struggle against these contradictions. A heavily predictable comic turn from Paul Creighton as the monumental stonemason and another weighted role from Martin Lucey as the pliant commercial traveller are both scripted as insects caught in the widow’s sticky web of intrigue. The web unravels in a closing monologue in which Maggie, planted centre-stage like a martyr to Irish hypocrisy, explains herself with a diatribe against the stultifying Catholic church and its ruinous effect on young love, a back-story so psychologically risible that it confirms suspicions of the play’s lascivious contempt for women.

Runs until July 19th with Sunday matinees

MARY LELAND