Jesus’s verdict?
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With the publication of the first English translation of the gospel of Judas, it may seem we’re awash in new editions of the Judas story. In fact, it’s been a lively industry since the earliest Christian writings. Set in a purlieu of Purgatory, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s 2005 play
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
(at the Boston Center for the Arts through August 5), the third Guirgis work to receive a regional debut from Company One, is an extended serio-comic courtroom saga that the title character spends much of curled up in a fetal position. Based mostly on Matthew’s account, in which a remorseful Judas hangs himself, and running close to three hours, the show brings forth a veritable Old and New Testament’s worth of saints and sinners. Peter, Thomas, Monica, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, and Satan all turn up to testify for or against the defense, and there are guest appearances by Mother Teresa and Freud.
The Last Days
would surely appeal to students of comparative religion and philosophy and even law — a pity Company One is staging it when school is out. The more so since Guirgis rewrites the Bible in his own irresistible smash-up slanguage. Saint Monica is a jive-talking pugilist who “nagged and nagged and nagged until God got so tired of my shit he saved my son.” Satan is a smoothie in a Gucci suit; Thomas is the “first one to head for the hills doing 90 when the Romans arrested him.”
The production boasts a ’60s-style sensibility, and not just because the 15 actors play multiple roles or because thrumming bass and dimmed lights accompany some of the monologues. Act two needs cutting; all the speeches and witness testimony don’t amplify the story.
This is a grand-scale musing on faith, and subtlety isn’t called for, especially in the very long speeches. Still, Mason Sand, Shawn LaCount, George Saulnier, and Greg Maraio give shading to characters who have cartoonish elements. Noel Armstrong’s zealous defense attorney occasionally seems to be steeling herself for the next cascade of language. Raymond Ramirez’s Judas brings poetry to the psychopathy; the remainder of the cast acquit themselves in various cameos.
Director Summer L. Williams oversees an enjoyable if overlong evening in which profundity about the spiritual life vies with wisecrackery. As Guirgis explains in the program notes: “I do know that I am in continuous need of the Spiritual and that I usually go to great lengths to avoid it.”
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