Show and Tell Post #2--The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot was written in 2005 and first performed off-Broadway at The Public Theatre, where it was directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, with a cast that included Eric Bogosian as Satan and Sam Rockwell as Judas Iscariot.  It was also performed at the West End at the Almeida Theatre, and it is a part of Theatre Baton Rouge’s Turner-Fischer City Series in 2013.  You can find the play at http://solomon.nadr.alexanderstreet.com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/cgi-bin/asp/philo/navigate.pl?nadr.1442.

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is about a modernized trial to determine whether or not Judas Iscariot was guilty of betraying Jesus Christ and whether or not Judas should be sent to heaven or hell.  The play dramatizes many events of the betrayal in the form of flashbacks and testimonies, but it also includes many tangentially-related historical figures such as Mother Teresa and Sigmund Freud.  The play begins with Judas’ mother stating that if her son goes to hell, then there is no God.  The trial begins, and the prosecution calls Judas’ mother (who defends Judas’ character), Mother Teresa (who said that Judas didn’t listen to God), Satan (who claims not to have coerced Judas), and Caiaphas the Elder (who claims that Judas approached him about betraying Jesus).  The defense calls Simon the Zealot (who says Judas did it for God), Sigmund Freud (who claims Judas was insane), and Pontius Pilate (whom the defense attorney berates for sending Jesus to death).  In the final scenes, Judas complains that Jesus should have made him better, and Jesus responds asking for Judas’ love.  The end of the play is a monologue of a man named Butch Honeywell praying to Judas.

One of the most interesting choices that Guirgis makes in building this play is that he does not include Judas Iscariot in many scenes.  This is not a play that chronologically retells the story of the betrayal of Jesus; the play simply is not about that singular relationship between Jesus and Judas.  It is more about commentary on those events.  The characters who have the most lines are not Jesus, Judas, or Satan—they are the fictional lawyers, Fabiana Aziza Cunningham and Yusef el-Fayoumy.  This helps to distinguish the play as a wacky Stephen Adly Guirgis play that just happens to be about religious themes.  I think the use of many characters onstage talking about one singular character who rarely appears reinforces a theme regarding the judgment and absolution of a guilty person by the community around him.  This play is less about whether or not what Judas was verifiable wrong, but more about what the community around him thinks about the situation.  Anyone with a vague understanding of the Bible would know that Jesus would forgive Judas for anything, so there is not much to say about that story.  This ensemble play is primarily about the community—it could perhaps be titled Some Relevant People’s Thoughts on the Last Days of Judas Iscariot.

On the other hand, the choice that I entirely disagree with was Guirgis’ decision to give some of the angels and religious character stereotypical urban black dialect.  Saint Monica is perhaps the worst offender, with lines like “Saint Augustine—he stopped bangin’ whores and sippin’ on some wine, and he became learn-ed, so fucking learn-ed that he’s known as one of the Fathers of the Church, and you look that shit up!”  Honestly, everyone but Jesus has this modernized dialect to some extent; I feel like Stephen Adly Guirgis doesn’t know how to write outside of the “New York voice.”  Even if I don’t understand why he treats so many religious characters with that modern voice, it does make sense that he separates Jesus from them by leaving Jesus the way that everyone would expect him to be played.