TRIALS

posted by James Reel

    I had a couple of good nights at the theater last weekend, and you can read about them in the latest Tucson Weekly. First, something special for Easter:

    I am happy to report that my expectations had been dashed by the time I staggered out of Stark Naked Productions' three-hour mounting of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. This is only Stark Naked's second show, I hadn't seen the first, and although I knew producer-director Eugenia Woods to be experienced and sincere, I figured this would be a worthy but not entirely successful effort with a large and therefore necessarily uneven cast. And the play? A trial in Purgatory to decide if Judas really deserves to rot in hell for betraying Jesus and then hanging himself, with witnesses including Satan, Freud and Mother Teresa, plus a cameo by Saint Monica, a jive-talkin' momma whose favorite word is "motherfucker"? Obviously, we were in for an irreligious farce.
    I was wrong, wrong, all wrong. Not about Eugenia Woods being experienced and sincere; that's what enabled her to assemble a strong, well-directed cast and put on a show of very good production values. This is not some well-meaning, amateurish Easter pageant; it's a skilled presentation of a serious play.
    Oh, yes, the script ... I was wrong about that, too. Sure, it has plenty of jokes and funny anachronisms and exaggerated characters--Pontius Pilate is like a gangsta rapper, and Satan, expertly played by Paul Clinco, comes off like an oily Mob nightclub owner. But in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis asks serious questions about free will and God's forgiveness, and he doesn't foist any easy answers upon us.

    Those rogues at the Rogue Theatre have taken a mildly cynical play by Bertold Brecht and, by stripping away Brecht's contrived happy ending, have solidly affirmed the work's dark view of human nature. And that's all to the good, theatrically speaking, in a play that asks how one can be good in a society that abuses those who try.