Jesus camp

Some have taken issue with my roasting of the Globe's hapless reviewer, Katie Johnston Chase, for her gormless review of "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years," (starring Abie Philbin Bowman, at left) when I hadn't even seen the show. My points in that article, however, were essentially independent of the show's particulars; they were, instead, a pointed critique of the Globe arts pages' spineless pop mindset.

Now, however, I've seen Bowman for myself - and needless to say, Chase looks worse than ever. Not only does she come off as an apolitical wuss, she even gets the performance wrong. Of course, Chase wasn't alone - one of the few Boston reviewers (so far) to take on the show, she was pretty much in line with this vapid (and unsigned) Metro take:

The problem . . . is that once Jesus enters Guantanamo Bay he gets lost and a preachy 26-year-old Dubliner filled with political idealism and a hefty dose of anti-American sentiment takes over . . . Seasoned comics have only recently begun to broach the subject of 9/11 and even then it’s done very carefully. But a still-wet-behind-the-ears idealist dressed as Jesus Christ preaching that Christians should just “turn the other cheek” might still be a bit much to handle, especially if it’s being billed as comedy . . .

Sigh. As with Chase, the Metro reviewer simply abandons Bowman's performance and themes - indeed distorts them - to obediently whip up the propaganda he/she believes some imaginary audience/editor wants to hear. It's too bad these two weren't around to do PR for Leni Riefenstahl - they would have rocked!

For believe it or not, the actual problem with Jesus: The Guantanamo Years is that (wait for it) - it's actually not enough of a lecture. We deserve a severe drubbing for tolerating the ongoing horror of not just Guantanamo but a whole Gulag of "black sites" in which we've been relentlessly torturing innocent people for years. Yes, before you say it, I know there are probably some real life terrrists in thar, too! But does that justify our torture of the innocent? Uh - no, "patriots," it does not. Grow a pair, would you, all you "Amurrican" cowards - we should not be shredding our Constitution, or playing the Ralph Fiennes role in Schindler's List, because we're afraid somebody might blow up a mall. Remember that part about dying to protect our liberty and the American way? Well that means sticking to our principles even after 9/11.

So given the grim low to which America has sunk, the sweet-but-feckless Abie Philbin Bowman's Jesus seems pretty lacking in the moral authority needed to get us back on track. This Jesus never would have attacked the money-changers in the temple, much less managed any coolly ironic dialogue with Pontius Pilate (or Dick Cheney); no, this Jesus is a sheepish, collegiate singer/songwriter, complete with guitar and encyclopedic knowledge of Monty Python and The Life of Brian. He is, certainly, quite funny; and his sense of the insanity of the American "War on Terror" (and indeed the ridiculousness of "Christian" political positions in general) is witty and targeted more tightly than a heat-seeking missile.

Still, once Jesus is incarcerated in Guantanamo (after all, he's a religious martyr who came out of a cave in Palestine - what did he expect?), Bowman does lose his way - but he doesn't wander off into a lecture. Instead, he treads water, trying not to alienate us as he attempts to cajole us into facing our collective evil. He still gets his laughs, but the performance meanders - it feels as if it's still in development, not in its second coming - and Jesus himself goes through no inner transformation. After all, there should be a motherlode of material here, as Jesus senses that, unlike the Romans, we have no interest in actually finishing him off. Likewise, you'd think that at this juncture - after being waterboarded, say, or being led around on a leash - Jesus might begin pondering the problem of evil, and whether his unassuming reasonableness has a chance against the vicious incompetence of the Bush administration, which is determined to not give him a chance at resurrection, but instead is bent on making him simply disappear (which, of course, is being done in his own name, a rather neat irony). Bowman likewise never delves into the nature of the other evil in Guantanamo - the real terrorists who no doubt are actually there (or are being created by our actions - does Jesus have no ministry to them?); but come to think of it, the original Jesus didn't really look into that, either.

Bowman has one great moment, when he echoes Matthew 27:46: "My God, my God - why have you forsaken me - again?" - and he devotes a few powerful minutes to explaining that "turning the other cheek" is no wimpy cop-out but rather a powerful form of engagement. But these moments soon pass, and we're back to the friendly shrugs and the pleading, fuzzy-wuzzy tone. True, "pushing the envelope" would no doubt lead to walk-outs - but then it might also have led to some genuine soul-searching, and perhaps even political transformation on the part of some (if not Katie Johnston Chase). And isn't that would Jesus would do?

"Please, just bring back the funny Jesus."

Crhist works the crowd in Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece.

It's rare that a Boston Globe review actually makes me see red (I'm just too jaded) - but perusing Katie Johnston Chase's review of "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years" in Saturday's edition made the whole world turn carmine. I don't recall seeing Chase's byline on a theatre review before - so let's hope this is both its first and last appearance. She was sent to cover Abie Philbin Bowman's one-man show at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater (because, I'd guess, as in my days at the paper, it was deemed a political hot potato, so no one with any clout was going near it) - and even Chase admits, the show has "a wonderfully simple premise: that today a bearded religious martyr from the Middle East . . . would be deemed a terrorist." So far, so good - and Chase gives Bowman high marks for his comic licks (which actually don't sound all that inspired), such as "how hard it is to eat M&Ms with holes in yours hands."

But uh-oh - when Jesus ends up in Guantanamo, Chase writes, the show "veers into dangerously serious territory." Did you get that? Dangerously serious. "Before you know it," our nonplussed correspondent whines, "we've lost the mood." But wait, she gets (unintentionally) funnier: "Clearly, Philbin Bowman is knowledgeable about what he calls the un-Christian conditions at the camp [emphasis added] . . . but we didn't come here for a lecture."

So Katie went to a show called "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years" for a laugh, only it turned out to be a total downer! Bummer! Especially since "we don't need to be hit over the head with the problems of Gitmo; we already know." Chill, dude - we already know about the torture of innocents! It's time to move on - moral outrage is like so pre-9/11! "There must be a way," Chase insists, "to maneuver through Guantanamo without derailing the show." Uh-huh. Maybe Bowman should page Roberto Benigni for tips.


Make 'em laugh . . . Jose Padilla tries out his stand-up routine.

But Chase's best, and most offensive, line simply has to be her admonishment to Bowman for getting so 'dangerously serious': "Please, bring back the funny Jesus."

Disgusting as it is, there's something pregnant about that phrase. Please bring back the funny Jesus. It's an unconsciously deep encapsulation of a generation's attitude, dontcha think? I'm sure Katie had her ancestors in prior eras ("We already know about the Gulag, Aleksandr! Enough already about Auschwitz, Primo!"), but would the earlier water-carriers for oppression have so openly expressed their longing to be released from responsibility? Please, just bring back the funny Jesus! PLEEEEEASE! This is the cry heard everywhere - please, don't tell us about it, we don't want to know! Or at least make it funny - give us an out! Don't say we've built a secret prison system in which innocent people are tortured! And don't tell me I'm paying for it!! I mean, sure, let's laugh at religion; let's laugh at Bush! But don't implicate me in what's going on - I'm just the audience, for chrissakes! This is a show, can't you understand? I mean it's totally cool to like be against what's going on, but it's totally uncool to actually do anything about it - so please, bring back the funny Jesus!

Sigh. Needless to say, Katie's review evidences no cojones whatsoever - but has anyone noticed the literal lack of balls in the Globe's theatre department these days? In the old days, local theatre reviewing was dominated by closeted theatre queens (Kevin Kelly, Arthur Friedman) - they were hardly models of political integrity (many of them were slow to approve color-blind casting, and were often hypocritically dismissive of openly gay material), so I'm hardly nostalgic for their reign of error. Still, the new feminine generation (in which all the genders have changed, but maybe not all the orientations) is arguably doing even worse, especially given that we're in the middle of a political crisis that makes Watergate look like a garden party. As I recall, Louise Kennedy once even opined that an Iraq War documentary at Trinity Rep was "successful precisely because it avoids polemic, on either side." Right - tell it to Brecht. Or Pinter. Or Shaw or Ibsen or Shakespeare, for that matter. Oh well. I suppose it's pointless to hope for political balls at the Globe arts page - but some actual balls (even some straight ones!) might be nice.