Author: Terrence McNally |
Title: |
Where seen: Gray Space Theater, Cedar Riverside Peoples’
Center, |
Director: Bryan Cole and Timothy Lee |
Performance time: 95 Min |
Cast: Stephen Frethem (Joshua), Dan Averitt (John), Patrick Bailey (Andrew), Topher Brattain (Thomas), David Dubin (James), Jim Geckler (Matthew), Joe Leary (Peter), Steve Lewsi (Janes the Less), Joshua Paul Olson *Ohilip), Jim Pounds (Bartholomew), Brent Teclaw (Thaddeus), John Trones (Judas), Mitchell J. Thompson (Simon) |
Recording available: |
Relevance to doaskdotell: |
Review “ Of course, in my days at the Various possible events today, varying from boys learning to play football to dealing with HIV, may to events that would occur during Jesus’s ministry. At one point, Josh yearns to be “normal” rather than be the son of God, with a delivery that reminds one of a scene in Smallville where Clark Kent tells his adoptive parents that he wants to fit in, until he realizes that he is really better off with his powers. Eventually, his dangerous differences and challenges to authority catch up with him, leading to a powerful crucifixion scene with a moment of total nudity. The lead actor is physically beaten on the back by a fake strap, enough though to plainly redden the skin, and one ponders what it is like for a stage actor to undergo this kind of physical contact in repeated performances. Frethem carries off the Christ part with kind of Shakespearean elegance and sonnet-like iambic rhythm, staying at just the right level of intensity and sincerity, never approaching melodrama. This is a kind of acting as salesmanship, and starts out in the very first scene as he is introduced and baptized as just another human being, soon to rise and overcome temptations. The other disciples vary in their distinction as personalities, some (such as Philip) much more memorable than others. But never is any of the dialogue mechanical, it is always played with sincerity. The play has in some cities attracted enormous controversy and threats. I
recall a bit of controversy (about hypothetical heterosexual contact between
Jesus and Mary Magdalene)after the 1988 film, The Last Temptation of Christ, by Martin Scorcese,
in which the Christ figure is played by a laconic and rather distant Willem
Dafoe (Dafoe seems like the same character to me wherever, even in Auto Focus). After the play we had a
panel and audience discussion that would have fit well on I don’t know if McNally has made progress with a film version of Corpus and film financing is a long process, but it is a no-brainer that a well-done film treatment of this play (with the gay and homosocial interpretation of Jesus and the disciples mapped to the present day world) would draw a big audience in the art houses (like Landmark), as well as a lot of pickets. This kind of material has Lions Gate or Miramax written all over it. One reader (apparently female) in It’s noteworthy that religious groups have protested the idea of a commercial movie based on this play even before there are any concrete plans to make it. The visitor can check here, for example: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/ban-any-film-version-of-the-play-corpus-christi.html The question remains, why should a religious group ban what I choose to see just because they feel “offended” by the interpretation offered. (Why will radical Muslims kill for “blasphemy”? Because religion is all they have to live for.) I mention that I had seen a stage rendition of The
Rocky Horror Picture Show a few weeks before at the Hey Theater in
Minneapolis, and I am struck by the psychological contrast between a play
like Corpus with great intimacy and
intensity, and the more “usual” camp (“gay monsters”) where no one (except
maybe one character) survives being forced into drag and all of its inherited
interfaces. The film (20th Century Fox, 1975, 100 min, R) with
Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry,
became a Beautiful Thing, by Jonathan
Harvey, is a little play, taking place in 1993 in a London flat and surrounding
neighborhood, about two teenage boys (Jamie and Steve) becoming friends and
dealing gradually with their likely homosexuality, at the disapproval (or at
least questioning) of Jamie’s mother. They get closer, with some backrubs and
such, and finally dancing in a pub, but nothing “happens.” It was presented
by the Trumpet Vine Theater Company in There is also a film directed by Hettie
MacDonald from Sony Pictures Classics (1996). It stars Glen Berry and Scott
Neal as the two teenagers in I saw another little play with a controversial religious theme, If
Angels Were Mortal, by Candyce A. Petersen, at
the Family Life Christmas Program at the Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985, dir. Eric
Schaeffer, music: John Kander; Lyrics: Fred Ebb;
book by Terrence McNally; novel by Manuel Puig)
performed at the Arlington Signature Theater in 2008. A lilting musical about
a gay man imprisoned as a “sex offender” after a real world sting in |
Related reviews: In the Heart of America film: A Home at the Edge of the World |
Return to doaskdotell plays, drama and shows
Return to doaskdotell home page