Judas Gets Another Shot
Don't know yet if we're going to have time/space/money in the print paper to re-review The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which is getting a much-deserved revival at the H Street Playhouse.
So let this be your cue: Go buy a ticket. The April-May run of Stephen Adly Guirguis' play was probably the single most thrilling piece of theater I've seen all year.
I mean: I'm a jaded 40-year-old theater critic, with a bad attitude most days, and I've been to more bad plays this year than I had bad one-night stands back in my 20s. And I cried like a damn baby at this show.
I'm telling everybody I know to go see it. I'm even pimping this play (which, y'know, isn't exactly PG) to the public-TV audience. Here's the script for my Best Bet on on WETA's Around Town, which I'm going over to Shirlington to tape in a few hours:
Something new opens in DC theaters pretty much every week, so I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on shows I've already reviewed -- especially shows that closed back in May. I'm gonna make an exception this week, though, for The Last Days of Judas Iscariot -- because it's coming back. And if you love the reach and the ambition and the intimacy and the power that makes theater theater, you really must go see this show. It's the story of the trial of Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus to the authorities, and it's set in a court in Purgatory. The judge is a dead Confederate who hanged himself on the day Lee surrendered; the witnesses include Mother Teresa, Sigmund Freud, Santa Monica and the Devil himself. This play -- it's a meditation on the tension between divine mercy and human free will -- is funny, and moving, and profane, and sad, and oh, man, the way it uses *language* -- it's just downright intoxicating, and it was the best thing I saw onstage this year. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, revived with
all of the original castall but one of the original cast*, at the H Street Playhouse to December 21.
The WETA audience won't see that until next week, after the show has opened. But you's my CP peeps, so you get the first heads-up.
Seriously: Go spend an evening with Judas. My original review is over here in the CP archive, if you need more convincing.
*Whoops. Got a call from Michael Dove. Turns out Maggie Glauber's having twins, and -- though initially it *was* supposed to be the whole original cast -- she won't be playing Mother Teresa again. My bad.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
Blogs Linking to this Article
-
Linked From: December 4th, 2008Elsewhere in the Blogisphere… « Notes from Forum Theatre
2:17 pm[...] Trey Graham, over at the Washington City Paper, wrote a nice post on the upcoming JUDAS revival. Check out it, and his other Theatre postings here. [...]
1:08 pm
I detest the theatre as being a primitive and putrid form, historically speaking; a form that smacks of stone-age rites and communal nonsense despite those individual injections of genius, such as, say, Elizabethan poetry which a good reader automatically pumps out of the stuff.
5:02 pm
ok, ernest, that sounds like the beginning of a rant. where's the pay-off?
regardless of how you might end this, you're wrong. know that.
5:41 pm
I loved working with this cast and in the Hst Playhouse.I enjoyed the show night after night and I wish I was in the area to bring it back to lifee. Look forward to catching it before the run is over. "Good Show"!
Liz Jones
Previous Assistant Stage Manager
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
8:44 pm
Gee, Ernest, those are precisely the reasons I love the theatre! "Stone age rites" etc. Love it.
Great play! Great work, Liz!
11:46 pm
Ernest likes reading what he writes and that's the reason he posts (that and so he can stroke his baby dick every time he thinks he gets under someone's skin). And if you've been paying attention, you will see that he has Multiple Personality Disorder and posts as several different people to try and strengthen his always weak points ('Peggy Maplewood' is Ernest, 'Bobby' is Ernest and I'm sure there are more). It would be great if he would sever his hands in a log mill so we wouldn't have to read his constant bullshit. He can't even form sentences without sounding like a confused jackass because he tries so hard to make himself sound smart that he turns his own words into nonsense. Please beat your own face in with a thesaurus, Ernest. I speak for almost everyone when I say that you should piss off, loser.
12:59 pm
Thorton,
from under which rock did you emerge, you ignorant reptile with zero brain cells? Go back to your hole. And stay there. Better yet, put a bag over your head, you acephalous cocksucker. What's more, you suck in every sense of the word. I'll certainly expand on the issue if you insist, pea brain.
Excuse me, readers.
1:58 pm
"Put a bag over your head you (headless) cocksucker"? You make no sense as usual, Ernest. Please do everyone a favor and die. Thank you.
And yes, the readers wish you would excuse yourself. Shoo.
2:49 pm
Not a chance, Thornton, you malodorous fuckwit.
Once again you proved yourself quite an idiot, Thorton, furthermore, as everyone knows, one of your buttocks is twice the size of the other. So there, Thorton. Do not embarrass yourself.
3:19 pm
I hope you do realize, Ernest, that you sound like a fourth-grader with a thesaurus. Don't you, Ernest? Referring to the size of a buttock, Ernest? Please dismiss yourself, Ernest.
3:34 pm
Thorn, I wish you had no breathing technique, arsewipe.
Look, I'm really busy here... Just get lost, you pubic hair on the bar of soap in the bathroom of life. Euuch..
3:46 pm
Nobody likes you, Ernest. Would you like to take a poll? And again with the childish responses like the one above. Really, Ernest, please grow up. What's next? Talk of doodies and more human anatomy references? Get back to your homework and quit commenting.
3:50 pm
Thor, you are unique. In a very bad way. I stress 'very', Thor.
3:56 pm
I have never seen someone who wanted to get the last word in as much as this pseudo-intellectual toolbag. LOL
This has been personally amusing for me. "Ernest". What a douche. It would be fun to meet him, if only briefly.
peace
4:27 pm
oh piss off already, Thor, you cancerous growth on the colon of humanity. Besides you are boring everyone.
Incidentally, the word ’douche’ is utterly disgusting and used almost exclusively by the those who may well be described as such. Yes, I'm talking about you, Thor.
9:47 pm
LOL DISREGARD THAT I SUCK COCKS
9:47 pm
Also, a douche is a hygenic product, so I take that as a compliment.
9:49 pm
I didn't mean it as a compliment, you self-important twit.
9:49 pm
Well, too bad, asshole, because that's how I took it.
9:50 pm
CANT WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
9:51 pm
No, you tard.
3:49 am
the original thornton never said "I didn’t mean it as a compliment, you self-important twit." that was an imposter. just sayin'. don't respond to ernest again and he won't continue to annoy.
6:43 pm
seriously? how old are you people?
5:21 pm
as a member of this cast, i for one would like to tell the obnoxious commenters to shut the hell up and get a life.
this is a piece we've poured significant portions of our souls into, and that audiences have responded to in a way i've never seen, and it's become embarrassing to forward around an otherwise nice, congratulatory writeup of our little show (thanks, TG!) to friends and family that for some inexplicable reason now contains such childish, pointless ribaldly between two self-indicative morons who have absolutely no connection with the show.
please, if it's so important to you to carry on 3rd grade-level name-calling with anonymous posters, do us a favor and write your own damn play, perhaps on the fascinating life of the internet troll.
anyone else - we'd love to have you in the audience. :)