Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play is the epitome of cool. From the outset is oozes stylistic panache, but by curtain call, there’s a sense that it falls short of the theatrical intensity it aims to achieve. And it is not for a lack of important questions that The Last Days of Judas Iscariot fails to convince. Guirgis asks whether Judas Iscariot’s damnation in hell can be reconciled by the idea of a merciful God. Instead of jeering at the idea that ‘the Lord upholdeth all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down’, as Beckett once did, Guirgis’ approach seems to be driven more by the doubts of those who still believe but want to know why.
The play opens with a strange whirling cacophony in darkness. From the darkness appears Judas’ mother, lamenting the fate of her sons. With fitting liturgical resonance, her lament grieves the two thousand years of suffering endured by her sons; and yet the scene is not without a touch of irony: it is precisely this declamation of pain, this self-composure, which brings her close to the very Church that has condemned her sons. Amanda Boxer’s sensual, husky voice underpins her monologue with a hint of suppressed emotion, strong enough to prevent it erring on the side of the mundane. There are other moments of subtle strength in the play - the silent face-offs between Judas (Joseph Mawle) and Jesus (Edward Hogg) for example; and Mawle’s masterful facial expressions that convey a sense of suffering beyond words.
But whilst there are ups, there are also some downs. Guirgis is too enamoured with his own snazziness, launching one punch line after another. All the characters in the play are potential joke fodder, laughable to the audience but also to each other. I fail to see, for example, the relevance in basing so many figures on variations of a stereotypical gangster rapper: Saint Monica, Pontius Pilate, Simon the Zealot, Gloria. The tendency towards stereotyping in this play allows for little audience connection with the characters, save perhaps for Gawn Grainger’s superb portrayal of Caiaphas. Caiaphas’ refusal to be defended and granted forgiveness raises the question about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity – a question that is more pertinent than ever since the Pope’s reintroduction of the prayer for the Jews into Catholic mass. But Caiaphas aside, the only excuse the author has for this general one-dimensionality, as far as I can see, is the fact that it serves as a juxtaposiation to the equally one-dimensional holiness (or evilness) of the biblical characters.
In any case, the evening felt too long. It was fun watching a typical American TV courtroom drama, but the whole situation was exploited too much for its punch lines. Towards the end, when Satan enters for the second time, I was longing for some sort of closure. And even when it came, it came in two parts. First, there was a very interesting argument between Jesus and Judas (the only verbal enounter we ever see between the two), in which the play manages to hover ambiguously above the pros and cons of Judas’ case. It challenges both an outright rejection of God’s damnation of Judas as well as an overly subtle theological argument in its favour. This is then followed by Butch Honeywell’s monologue (played by Shane Attwooll), whose connection to the rest of the play is tentative at best.
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot could make a good TV sitcom, but it fails to rise to the interpersonal demands of the stage.
I agree that the piece was fairly self-indulgent, but then again, when I think about it, most large scale productions usually are. Humility and subtlety are too often the victims of large budgets, executive producers and time constraints.