Theater Review - Passion play
Gospel story acts up in Corpus Christi
A lightning rod in the shape of a crucifix, the Gospel-themed play Corpus Christi has drawn controversy since its 1998 off-Broadway debut. Love! Valour! Compassion! playwright Terrence McNally brought down the wrath of Christian conservatives by reinterpreting the Christ story with a gay man named “Joshua” standing in for the son of God. The Manhattan Theatre Club nearly canceled Corpus Christi’s world premiere, and protests plagued subsequent productions in Florida and Indiana.
Always provocative, Corpus Christi has never been more timely than now, with America still processing The Passion of the Christ and the hot-button issue of domestic partnerships. Onstage Atlanta’s heartfelt but unpolished production, performed in the theater’s intimate O2 space, doesn’t fully do justice to McNally’s script, but establishes that Corpus Christi’s spiritual agenda goes deeper than simply pissing off the evangelical right.
McNally’s script makes a point of its own self-conscious theatricality, and begins with the 13 actors being baptized one by one, first identified by their real names, then christened as members of the Apostles. They riff anachronistically about their characters, who include an architect and a hairdresser. Judas (Benjamin Hammer) stands apart from the rest, proving fiercely intelligent, but also callow and arrogant. “I’ve got a big dick,” he announces.
The ensemble plays male and female roles, changes costumes on stage, evokes many locations with minimal props, and romps through the play’s unexpected comedy.
For the Nativity, the actors sing “Jingle Bells” and other carols as the Virgin Mary (Jeroy Hannah) arrives at a South Texas motel. Her child, Joshua (Adam Johnson), grows into a sensitive boy, at odds with his football-obsessed, sexist classmates at Pontius Pilate High School. More than his nascent homosexuality, the voice of God and the sound of hammers haunt young Joshua.
Joshua’s prom night takes him through familiar phases of the coming out process, from the frustrated girl who doesn’t understand him to the hot stranger (Judas) who does. Hammer portrays the Texas messiah as a likable ordinary guy with an infectious message of love, but his performance never conveys Joshua’s more complex levels of anger, fear and ambivalence about his fate.
Across the board the cast provides uneven, at times amateurish performances. Their loose lack of artifice becomes an advantage when conveying the Apostles’ camaraderie and sense of mission. You can easily imagine them as a tight, traveling band of college-age ACT-UP activists. (One remarks, “We were so fucking cool it hurt.”)
But McNally’s meta-theatrical approach sharply alternates from wrenching sadness to kitschy humor. It’s like the players have to shift gears, within moments, from the drama of The Laramie Project to the frivolity of The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, and most have trouble keeping up. Exceptions include Hannah, who transcends camp to convey Mary’s devotion to her son, as well as Peter’s despair at Joshua’s death. When Satan appears - in the guise of James Dean - to Joshua in the desert, Nicholas Tecosky makes a fittingly sinister hipster.
Joshua incurs religious condemnation by officiating at a gay wedding, and throughout the show his homosexuality puts an intriguing spin on the Christ story. The gay politics add complexity to the “love your fellow man” message, and the play finds contemporary parallels to New Testament stories, such as despised hustler Philip (Rob Bullard), whom Joshua cures of being HIV-positive. As recent election returns demonstrate, any public figure who argues that God has no problem with homosexuality would invite persecution.
Directed by Barry N. West, Onstage Atlanta’s Corpus Christi emphasizes so much hugging and personal witnessing, it feels like a casual-dress workshop at a religious retreat. But the final spectacle of Joshua’s tortures achieves some of the pathos of a conventional passion play.