Some things just have to be true, isn't that right? For example, Terrence McNally is the author of one of the most artistically successful plays ever written about the gay experience, Love! Valour! Compassion!. He's also the writer of the thrilling tribute to diva Maria Callas, Master Class. So when a writer of this stature decides to re-envision the New Testament as if it were written about a gay male crucified as "King of the Queers," you can be sure that the resulting script will, like the two I just mentioned, be imaginative, provocative and affecting, right? Surely Corpus Christi, as he calls the play, will force us to see that, like Jesus, gays and lesbians have been crucified, and that like Jesus, their crime has been nothing less than preaching love. And certainly McNally, with his prodigious mastery of dialogue, will bring this point home to us with eloquence, incisiveness and wit. Right? Right?Wrong.
Corpus Christi, I'm sorry to say, is a crude, under-imagined mess of a play that, in its present production at the Suncoast Resort, comes across like an amateur theatrical in a (liberal) church basement. This tedious exercise is so uninspired, so lacking in verbal or any other sort of inventiveness, I can hardly believe that it's written by McNally. There are lots of good intentions here — the author is obviously passionate about gay rights — but from the plastic doll that's supposed to represent the baby Jesus to the philosophically unexplored idea that Jesus and Judas were lovers to the appearance of a James Dean character who, for unknown reasons, represents Satan, this play is one unpersuasive, unthought-out notion after another. Only the very last minutes of the production — the crucifixion itself — are emotionally powerful, but by then McNally has so utterly failed in making his oppressed gays/oppressed Jesus parallel, we might as well be watching a traditional passion play. At least the actors seem to be having a good time — as they bless and embrace each other, we sense that the play is a real bonding experience for them — but no such luck for us spectators. We're just bored, and anxious to put the evening behind us.
Not that Corpus Christi is entirely without religious ideas. McNally does have one such idea — that all humans are divine — and he starts his play with John the Baptist pouring water on each actor's head and, calling the actor by his or her real name, saying "I baptize you and recognize your divinity as a human being." But once this potentially controversial assertion is made, the play quickly becomes a crude and cartoonish reinterpretation of the New Testament narrative. Judas introduces himself: "Weak bodies disgust me. I've got a big dick." Props are introduced: "His little dog, Nebuchadnezzar. … A pair of blue suede shoes." The baby Jesus is born: "I was so cute! Look at me! Where did all that blond hair come from?" Soon Jesus is 13 and a priest is criticizing him for not being athletic: "Every boy in Corpus Christi plays football." In senior year of high school he fumbles around sexually — "Those aren't my tits, Josh. These are my tits" — but then he's seduced by Judas — "… We painted J & J … on the water tower and the next day nobody knew who J and J were but us." And a high school girl reminisces about that night: "You don't decorate your high school gym for your senior prom or edit the yearbook with someone you think is the Messiah. He wasn't boyfriend material, that's for certain."
Then Jesus begins his years of wandering, and author McNally seems almost to forget his gay theme. So Jesus heals a blind truck driver, refuses the temptations of James Dean/Satan, feeds the hungry, raises up disciples — and all virtually without reference to his homosexuality. Then the gay motif returns as Judas shows up — "I own three restaurants. Just try to get a reservation" — and Jesus heals a hustler who's HIV-positive. For the rest of the play, the familiar Christian story competes with the gay reinterpretation for our attention, just as an undistorted articulation of the Lord's Prayer occurs moments before Jesus presides over a same-sex marriage. Then there's the Last Supper — "The secret is all in the marinade" — and, finally, the crucifixion. The play now seems conventionally Christian with some gay asides, and we've almost forgotten McNally's main gambit, the depiction of his hero as a homosexual. At the end, a character tells us we've witnessed the "birth pangs of the new age," but we're not sure exactly what we've witnessed, why it was so unconvincingly silly half the time, and so solemn the rest. Anyway, we're glad it's over.
As for the acting in this offering by Gypsy Productions, it's all ultra-sincere but only occasionally winning. Carlos Milan as Jesus, or "Joshua," does a respectable job and looks the part, and Larry Buzzeo as Judas Iscariot admirably refrains from exaggerated representations of wickedness. Daniel J. Harris is top-notch in multiple roles, as is Donald W. Roeseke, Jr.; and Slake Counts as John exudes friendliness and goodwill. The other actors don't often rise above the material they're unfortunately saddled with. Nic Arnzen's direction has a deliberately ad hoc, sloppy feel, but the set, by Arnzen and Trevor Keller, is backed by an attractive mural of a forest, in the foreground of which stands a fence like the one on which Matthew Shepard was martyred. The costumes by Roeseke, Jr. and Keller aren't particularly interesting: mostly khaki trousers and white shirts. Richard Traylor's lighting, on the other hand, is consistently impressive.
But this is not a good experience. It's too coarse, too unreflective and then too obvious. Its most provocative ideas aren't examined closely enough, and its most conventional pieties aren't offered in a new light. Is the play offensive? Any play this tiresome is, to a theatergoer, offensive.
Terrence McNally is deservedly known as one of our best playwrights. But that reputation has nothing to do with Corpus Christi.
First Folks The Adam and Eve Diary should probably be billed as a play for young audiences. Certainly there's little in this cheerful but bland Mark Twain adaptation that would make it attractive to adults. For example, there's nothing in the play on the subject of sexuality, and questions of moral responsibility — who to blame for that apple — are conspicuously absent. What are present are saccharine songs, overly obvious and redundant jokes, some suspense over whether Eden is a boy's or a girl's club — matters, that is, that might register for a 10-year-old. The acting, by Eric Davis and Lydia Bell, is likable enough and, though Davis is the better crooner of the two, Bell's charm almost compensates for the thinness of her voice. But no amount of talent could make this script fascinating or these songs — by Davis, Bell, Ryan O'Shaughnessy and John Michael Zov — very pleasing. Fortunately, the show is short — only about an hour and a quarter. I wouldn't have had it last a moment longer.There's not much of a plot to Adam and Eve; instead there's a series of what you might call running gags. Will the first male and female ever accept each other? Will Eve get her wish for a pet brontosaurus (I told you this was childish)? Will Adam ever realize that their baby Cain isn't a fish or a bear or even a kangaroo? Director Linda Slade capably emphasizes the playfulness of the text (again suggesting that it's aimed at youngsters) and set designer Ireneo Cabreros offers us an attractively silly Eden, with an apple tree in a vase and a child's wading pool as a lake. But (again, for an adult) there's nothing to think about here, and even less to feel. I don't know the Twain piece from which the play was adapted, but this production is not the sort of thing to send one running to the library.
In sum: this is the play that introduces the third grade to theater. It's harmless and G-rated.
As for grown-ups: you'll have a lot more fun — and find a lot more complexity — re-reading Genesis.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in May 19-25, 2004.
