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by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by David Ferry

BirdLand Theatre Company, Fermenting Cellar,

Bldg. 6 & 7, Distillery Historic District, Toronto

April 7-15, 2009

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a fantastic play performed by a fantastic cast.  Who says that contemporary writers don’t tackle the “big themes” anymore?  American Stephen Adly Guirgis dramatizes nothing less than the trial in the afterlife of Judas Iscariot for his betrayal of Jesus Christ.  The cast BirdLand Theatre has assembled is even starrier than the one it featured for its first multi-Dora-winning staging of Judas in 2007.  Where else can you see together in one play both Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt from 2 Pianos, 4 Hands, both Louise Pitre and Adam Brazier from Mamma Mia!, with Diego Matamoros, Philip Akin, Shaun Smyth, playwright Morris Panych and seven other fine actors?  To top it off, David Ferry directs the three-hour-long surreal fantasy with visual panache and has drawn a whole gallery of vivid characterizations from the entire cast.

Judas is both an elaborate psychodrama and a modern mystery play.  Arguing for Judas’s acquittal is Irish-American attorney Fabiana Cunnigham (Janet Porter), while prosecuting is the Egyptian Catholic El-Fayoumy (Panych), two who just happen to reflect Guirgis’s own parental background.  The fundamental question, one that intrigued innumerable Church Fathers, is why God should have condemned Judas to Hell, when Judas’s actions were a known and necessary part in the divine plan of salvation.  Judas’s despair and suicide are sins, but if God is all-merciful, why is this mercy withheld from Judas?  The play bursts with fundamental questions--free will versus determinism, faith versus reason, the nature of justice, the existence of evil, the origins of anti-Semitism and more.  

Just as medieval playwrights relocated biblical events to their local countrysides, so Guirgis generates much humour by relocating this epic trial to a purgatory resembling present-day American complete with heavy regional and urban accents.  Dykstra is hilarious as the crusty Southern Judge Littlefield, who hears the trial as is Panych as the fawning El-Fayoumy, while Porter provides a perfect foil as someone for whom this trial is a serious test of faith.  Mother Theresa (Aviva Armour-Ostroff), Sigmund Freud (Greenblatt), Caiaphas (Dykstra) and Pontius Pilate (Akin) are among the witnesses called, but Matamoros’ Satan is the most unforgettable.  A cross between Hugh Hefner and Tony Soprano, his Satan oozes universal contempt and his casual demoralization of both attorneys is chilling.  Meanwhile, Smyth is heart-breaking as Judas, cast out from God’s light and ripped up inside by what he sees as Jesus’ betrayal of his love, homoerotic connotations intended.  Judas had such a short run in 2007, few could see it.  Now that it’s back, don’t miss its wonders.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-04-10.

Photo: Diego Matamoros as Satan. ©Guntar Kravis.