Welton Jones

San Diego Arts

"Corpus Christi" at Diversionary Theatre

Jesus and Judas go way back
By Welton Jones
Posted on May 04 2008
Last updated May 04 2008

When a steely polemicist like Terrence McNally decides to fashion a vernacular version of the Jesus Christ story, choosing Corpus Christi, Texas, as a setting must be irresistable. Not only is there the built-in irony of the Latin name but also the ample negative stereotypes of regional barbaric menace. (“Jesus? Sounds like he’s a Mexican!”)

And, just to be sure, the playwright specified the 1950s, currently an evocative period for unenlightened cruelty, readily adaptable, in the popular consciousness, for crucifixions both real and symbolic.

But McNally has more on his mind than “Godspell” without music. His pulpit is the theatre, his text the old familiar gospels but his theology is homosexuality.

Like most great stories, the biography of Jesus Christ can accommodate endless interpretations. (“In my Father’s house are many mansions,” as Christ told John.) A homosexual slant, with Jesus an outcast branded as “different” and Judas as boyhood friend and lover, works better than some concepts. And McNally is a master dramatist, so he usually senses the exact moment to move away from matters of the flesh and into the broader cope of the spirit.

Actually, as Nic Arnzen has staged the play for Diversionary Theatre, the homosex becomes little more than an occasional distraction. Since four women and nine men play all the roles in a merry mix of gender, the whole gay agenda often gets lost in the swelling sweetness of the story and disappears entirely, except for a couple of nudges, in the somber horrors of the conclusion.

(If McNally were an ardent pet-lover, there would be more dogs and cats involved. If he lived for model airplanes or skin-diving, well who knows?)

The story, as a couple of the actors point out in the informal prologue, is always the same. And everybody knows it.

The stage is resolutely bare and the costumes are doggedly bland in Arnzen’s staging for Diversionary. The actors are milling about in something like a frenzy of casuality as the audience enters. There is much hugging, excited fake conversations, coy waves to friends in the audience and general bustle, followed by an organizing ritual in which each actor is assigned an identity.

The story then weaves in giddy abandon through a burlesque of the Nativity, book ended by scraps of overheard cruelties, and into a confusion of childhood tribulations and failures, accompanied by two major countermelodies: God’s voice dispensing distant and distracted encouragement and the carpenter sounds of a cross being built. The sexual innuendos are never far away and the senior prom is a landmark horror.

After a sojourn in the wilderness (and an intermission) the show clicks into the spiral toward the conclusion, which is Christ’s death, period. No time left for the subsequent mysticism, just a quick rumination on the likely impact of all this.

The fiction of such productions is that all actors are created equal, which just isn’t true. Author and director contrive to give each performer a bit in which to shine but the result is depressingly like TV guest shots. There are a few performers – Rich Carrillo, Scott Andrew Amiotte, Brian Mackey – always worth watching. And Rachael Van Wormer is in a class by herself. But even these are caught up in their duties to be part of the whole. And rightly so. The staging, like the story, is more important than its parts. Even the banal, canned music doesn’t really matter.

Probably McNally is satisfied with his success in making the points important to him. I hope Arnzen and his cast are content that they did what was required. And Diversionary Theatre, now in its 22nd season, deserves a salute for continuing to serve its audience.

But personally, I prefer metaphors less encrusted with dogma and ritual.

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About the author: Welton Jones has been reviewing shows for 50 years as of October 2007, 35 of those years at the UNION-TRIBUNE and, now, six for SANDIEGO.COM where he wrote the first reviews to appear on the site.
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Comments

Posted by Nic Arnzen	May 5, 2008
Thank you for taking the time to see the show.

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