Reviews

Review Number 1

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Reviewed By: Dan Bacalzo · Mar 3, 2005 · New York

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Sam Rockwell and John Ortizin The Last Days of Judas Iscariot(Photo © Carol Rosegg)
Has Judas Iscariot suffered long enough? He's languished in Hell since he committed suicide following his betrayal of Jesus Christ, but does he really deserve to be there? In The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis makes a case for the potential redemption of the most infamous sinner in the Bible -- or, rather, he has Judas' defense attorney make it.
The ambitious production, co-presented by LAByrinth Theater Company and The Public Theater, has much to recommend it. It's witty, irreverent, epic in scope, and it showcases several outstanding performances; yet it also features a number of weaker actors, has a sprawling narrative that doesn't quite come together, and is in serious need of editing.
The action centers around a courtroom in Purgatory. Fabiana Aziza Cunningham (Callie Thorne) appeals the sentence of eternal damnation that has been handed to her client, Judas Iscariot (Sam Rockwell). At first, the presiding judge (Jeffrey DeMunn) dismisses the seemingly ludicrous case, but Cunningham is persistent. She asks Saint Monica (Elizabeth Rodriguez) to intercede and, eventually, the judge can ignore her no longer. Arguing for the prosecution is Yusef El-Fayoumy (Yul Vázquez), a rather inept lawyer who is himself "temporarily" detained in Hell, which he attributes to a problem with his papers.
The play never actually explains how Judas became Cunningham's client; whenever the audience is given a glimpse of Judas in Hell, he is in such a catatonic state that it's obvious he didn't hire the lawyer. It's also unclear what Cunningham gets out of arguing the case. She's not even sure that she believes in God, and her interactions with Satan (Eric Bogosian) make it clear that she's not trying to do the devil any favors. An intriguing possibility is that she was hired by Jesus Christ (John Ortiz). This would be in keeping with the portrayal of Jesus within the play; however, at no point is this actually stated or even hinted at.
Directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is often broadly farcical. Several cast members give over-the-top performances, not always to good effect. Vázquez, for example, plays nothing more than a caricature and gets (some) laughs due to his wacky delivery. On the other hand, the high-octane approach is well-suited to Rodriguez's foul-mouthed Saint Monica, whose energy and attitude is complemented by a depth of feeling that is not in evidence in Vázquez's performance.
Rockwell's portrayal of the play's title character, primarily in flashback sequences, is uneven. The actor is not that convincing when portraying Judas at age eight but he acquits himself quite well when he converses with Satan at a bar following his betrayal of Jesus. Bogosian is a treat as the devil, who is on such friendly terms with the judge that the latter calls him "Lu" (short for Lucifer). A snazzy dresser (costumes by Mimi O'Donnell), Satan is friendly and laid-back one moment but capable of supreme nastiness the next.
Among the other witnesses called to testify, the standouts are Stephen McKinley Henderson as a riveting Pontius Pilate and DeMunn, stepping down as judge in order to do double duty as a conflicted Caiaphas the Elder. The testimony from Judas' mother could be interesting but is not as performed here by Deborah Rush, who lacks expressiveness and seems to be saying her lines by rote. To make matters worse, it's her character that opens the play, so things don't start on a good note. One of Adly Guirgis's conceits is to have more recently deceased individuals such as Sigmund Freud (Adrian Martinez) and Mother Theresa (Liza Colón Zayas) also take the stand. While it makes some sense for Freud to serve as a psychiatric expert, the sequence with Mother Theresa has little bearing on the case at hand, and an extended joke about her being hard of hearing goes on too long without much of a payoff.
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Adrian Martinez, Yul Vázquez, and Jeffrey DeMunn in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot(Photo © Carol Rosegg)
There are a number of other scenes that, like this one, could either be edited or eliminated entirely. For example, an expository speech by new angel Gloria (Colón Zayas again) at the top of the play doesn't seem all that necessary, and the more crucial information contained in it could easily be given to one of the other characters to impart. A second act conversation between Saint Monica and Mary Magdalene (Yetta Gottesman) could also be dropped without losing much.
Andromache Chalfant's set design includes a second tier that surrounds the main playing area on three sides. This is where several saints give speeches, as if from Heaven on high -- but, curiously, the scenes in Hell also take place on this elevated platform. Since sections of the audience seating are located directly underneath, it appears that some patrons do not have great sightlines for the action taking place above them.
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a departure for Adly Guirgis in that it's much more allegorical than such previous works as Jesus Hopped the A Train and Our Lady of 121st Street. But, as the titles of those plays indicate, there are commonalities, as well. Most significantly, the playwright returns to the theme of redemption -- or, at least, the possibility of redemption.
The closing sequence of the play is one of its strongest yet seems oddly detached from the main proceedings. Jury foreman Butch Honeywell (Kohl Sudduth) delivers a lengthy, moving speech reminding the audience that betrayals do not have to be on the scale of that committed by Judas to have a debilitating effect on the lives (and afterlives) of those guilty of them. This monologue is followed by a touching interaction between Judas and Jesus, riveting in its simplicity. If the entire play were as well-written and compellingly performed as this sequence, the production would be much more satisfying.



Review #2Arts Review

The good, the bad and the photocopier
Saints and sinners slug it out in a thrilling courtoom drama, while Rear Window meets The Office
Susannah Clapp
The Observer,
Sunday April 6 2008
Article history

Too many words ... The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot Almeida, London N1
Contains Violence Lyric Hammersmith, London W6
Iracible, talk-hungry and rapid, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is the perfect match for Rupert Goold and his Headlong company. The play's vaulting subject matter is also an exact fit.
The New York dramatist Stephen Adly Guirgis stormed the Edinburgh Festival seven years ago with Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, in which a man driven to kill a religious leader meets a born-again mass murderer in jail. Headlong have long made it their project to stage epics and to investigate faith in a secular age: they've boldly enacted Paradise Lost as well as a Faust influenced by the Chapman brothers. Now Guirgis and Goold come together to create a demotic mock trial of the betrayer of Christ.
Judas - a scraggy and riveting Joseph Mawle (last seen batting for the other side as Jesus in BBC1's The Passion) really looks as if he's just been cut free of his noose - is not so much arraigned as reassigned to a category of unfairly or at least unprovenly traduced. With the help of testimony from Freud, Mary Magdalene, Mother Teresa and Simon the Zealot (a very funny John Macmillan mumbles sullenly under his hood), Christianity is put on a series of argumentative racks: the main contention is that a God who was really both loving and all-powerful would not have created an unforgivable human being.
Guirgis, a writer of tireless ingenuity, renders much of this as hip hop holiness. Saint Monica is all sass as she squares up to the audience: 'Yo, Helen Keller! Yo, wake up'; Pontius Pilate is super-spruce with his golfing plus fours, purple socks and impenetrable - 'I'm a roll-out now, boo' - spiel. Gawn Grainger's grave and perfectly judged Caiaphas the Elder is a counterbalance to the general tumult.
Facetiousness strikes from time to time, as does straggle: Guirgis doesn't so much marshal the debate for and against Judas as throw contradictions up in the air and let them fight it out. Still, the arguments are multifarious (Mother Teresa gets a bit of a bashing) and the intensity is terrific: even when apparently secular, this is a play fuelled by the white heat of belief.
Goold's direction echoes and amplifies the excitement. The region of downtown Purgatory in which the action is set whirls tipsily with videos of clouds and traffic. Satan rises through the floor in a wreath of smoke, and turns out to be Douglas Henshall, plausible, white-suited and, as so often, more eloquent and beguiling than the patsyish Jesus.
If anything, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot has too many words. Contains Violence, the latest theatrical disruption from David Rosenberg of Shunt Collective, has too few.
In an office above Pret a Manger in Hammersmith, a woman in a polka-dot dress shimmies round the photocopier with her mobile. A couple of floors above, a chap in a suit taps away at his computer, lit by a fluorescent blaze. A figure bobs around among a line of ornamental plants. A sleek dining room, with gleaming table and high stools, stands empty under dangling lamps. And opposite, across the street, spectators sit in ranks on the roof terrace of the Lyric, scrutinising this action through binoculars, hearing the sounds of each room through specially calibrated headphones.
In an imaginative leap, Rosenberg upturns audience's expectations. In Contains Violence the spectators aren't in the same building as the actors. You make up your own long-shots and close-ups, using their binoculars to zoom in and out at will; the headphones, which are designed to lock you into the action (you hear not just conversation but the slosh of water, the ring of a phone, the crackle of paper, the clink of a keyboard), also protect you from the sound of other audience members and from street noise. You are, weirdly, much further away from the actors than usual but aurally much closer up. Beneath the imaginary acts of violence, as in a dreamlike backdrop, buses pass by silently, pedestrians bustle, and ambulances speed to real emergencies. Occasionally, a non-actor - a cleaner or late worker - gets snarled up accidentally in the action.
So far, so illuminating: this inside-outsideness sets you up to look quite differently at your surroundings - which is not something The Importance of Being Earnest will usually help you do. But the exciting stuff has actually all happened before the show begins: this is a concept, an occasion, not a drama. Contains Violence has contrived the most thrilling of settings, but it doesn't manage to convey a real story or any richness of expression. The hard-to-follow plot, which has a vague Hitchcockian theme of voyeurism, culminates in an apparent murder, with a bit of blood smeared down glass, but for most of the time it staggers along from incident to incident with no sense of development. This is a show that points - as did the National's speechless play, The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other - both to a gap and an opportunity in British theatre. These are shows which offer the stage new manoeuvres, and which are alive with visual ideas. They make audiences squirm, leap up and walk out: they don't make them comatose. What they lack are stories and writers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/apr/06/theatre2



Review # 3
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

From Jesus to Judas Mawle given lead in Last Days of Judas Iscariot
See all posts on this filmJoseph Mawle, shortly to be seen on our screens as Jesus in the BBC's take on The Passion, will play Judas in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Mawle has always switched between television and the theatre, so in many ways his stint at the Almeida is nothing new. Yet at the same time it's a fascinating choice for his next role. The Almeida's website describes The Last Days of Judas Iscariot as a "hilarious and extraordinary court-room drama where history’s most infamous betrayal is dissected by the forces of good and evil."It will be interesting to see how this turns out given the fate of other actors who have played Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth's Robert Powell struggled to find any more serious work and ended up being Jasper Carrott's sidekick in The Detectives. Ted Neeley decided to make playing the lead role in Jesus Christ Superstar his career, and James Caviezel hasn't exactly done a great deal since starring in The Passion of the Christ. So is this an attempt to make a clean break from The Passion by playing the opposite character straight after? Or did he find the subject matter so engaging that he immediately sought to explore it from a different angle? Either way, whilst it may be precisely the thing that enables him to have a decent career post-Jesus, I suppose there's a risk that he might end up being type cast.The most notable example of the same actor playing both Jesus and Judas is John Drew Barrymore who played both roles in 1962's Ponzio Pilato. Other notable oddities are in Godspell where the roles of Judas and John the Baptist are often played by the same actor, and I seem to recall that the aforementioned Ted Neeley was originally planning to audition for the role of Judas rather than Jesus.As for the play itself, there's a good preview at Indie London which describes it as
...a time-bending, serio-comic drama in an imagined world between Heaven and Hell that re-examines the plight and fate of The New Testament’s most infamous sinner. In a trial of "God and the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth versus Judas Iscariot", figures ranging from Pontius Pilate to Sigmund Freud are called to testify.Guirgis’ distinct and utterly contemporary voice uses the violent, chaotic energy of modern America, and particularly of New York, to explore timeless questions of free will and responsibility, of faith and fate.One last connection here is that the original version of Last Days was shown at New York’s Public Theatre in 2005, and was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman, of course, had previously featured in Along Came Polly as an actor who is playing the roles of both Jesus and Judas in an am-dram version of Jesus Christ Superstar.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.almeida.co.uk/Images/Judas/judasmonica1gallery.jpg&imgrefurl=http://feignedmischief.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/theatre-review-the-last-days-of-judas-iscariot/&h=400&w=601&sz=62&hl=en&start=17&tbnid=c0hswyNekumvPM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlast%2Bdays%2Bof%2Bjudas%2Biscariot%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG


Review #4
Oct 25-Nov 18Thu-Sat 8 pmSun 2 pm
Director Tom Parr IV
By LAWSON TAITTE / Staff Writer Last year, Tom Parr IV cast Dan Forsythe as a serial killer in Risk Theater Initiative's Glory of Living, my favorite Dallas production of 2006. This year, Mr. Parr has cast Mr. Forsythe as Judas in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Does he know something about this actor that we don't?
Actually, Mr. Forsythe is a personable young fellow who teaches at the University of Dallas. He'll also play Orlando in WaterTower Theatre's upcoming As You Like It, so he doesn't just portray bad guys.
But the matchup of director and actor promises great things for The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which opens Risk's new main stage space just outside downtown on Thursday.
Risk's headquarters is a beautifully preserved former church on Ross Avenue, but the two main performance spaces are in adjoining warehouse-type structures. A flurry of building has been going on since Risk signed the lease-to-buy papers last spring.
"It's looking good," Mr. Parr says. "We're getting all the chairs in, the sets in, all that stuff. The dressing rooms and things aren't finished yet."
The playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis, is hot these days. Kitchen Dog Theater will do its second production of one of his pieces next month, for instance. Mr. Guirgis often approaches religious topics from a decidedly edgy point of view, which is OK by Mr. Parr, who started out as a religion major at Baylor University before deciding on theater as a career.
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is set up as a trial of the disciple who betrayed Jesus. In Mr. Parr's production, R Bruce Elliott plays the judge and Chad Gowen Spears and Jennifer Pasion play the attorneys. Some of the witnesses might be a little surprising. Sigmund Freud is one of them, and Mother Teresa (played by the usually hilarious Ginger Goldman) is another.
Are religious folks likely to find this one way too outrageous?
"Honestly, I think it's one of those plays that if people come in and want to be offended, they might be. But I don't see how someone who stays through the end would be offended," Mr. Parr says. "It's definitely R-rated, or maybe PG-13, mostly because of the language, but we're talking to church groups, encouraging them to come."
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/10-07/GLjudas2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.guidelive.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/columnists/ltaitte/stories/DN-risk_1026gl.ART.State.Edition2.4343604.html&h=407&w=300&sz=26&hl=en&start=10&tbnid=B3yLhlMpHPXCJM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=92&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlast%2Bdays%2Bof%2Bjudas%2Biscariot%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG


Review #5
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

From Jesus to Judas Mawle given lead in Last Days of Judas Iscariot
See all posts on this filmJoseph Mawle, shortly to be seen on our screens as Jesus in the BBC's take on The Passion, will play Judas in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Mawle has always switched between television and the theatre, so in many ways his stint at the Almeida is nothing new. Yet at the same time it's a fascinating choice for his next role. The Almeida's website describes The Last Days of Judas Iscariot as a "hilarious and extraordinary court-room drama where history’s most infamous betrayal is dissected by the forces of good and evil."It will be interesting to see how this turns out given the fate of other actors who have played Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth's Robert Powell struggled to find any more serious work and ended up being Jasper Carrott's sidekick in The Detectives. Ted Neeley decided to make playing the lead role in Jesus Christ Superstar his career, and James Caviezel hasn't exactly done a great deal since starring in The Passion of the Christ. So is this an attempt to make a clean break from The Passion by playing the opposite character straight after? Or did he find the subject matter so engaging that he immediately sought to explore it from a different angle? Either way, whilst it may be precisely the thing that enables him to have a decent career post-Jesus, I suppose there's a risk that he might end up being type cast.The most notable example of the same actor playing both Jesus and Judas is John Drew Barrymore who played both roles in 1962's Ponzio Pilato. Other notable oddities are in Godspell where the roles of Judas and John the Baptist are often played by the same actor, and I seem to recall that the aforementioned Ted Neeley was originally planning to audition for the role of Judas rather than Jesus.As for the play itself, there's a good preview at Indie London which describes it as
...a time-bending, serio-comic drama in an imagined world between Heaven and Hell that re-examines the plight and fate of The New Testament’s most infamous sinner. In a trial of "God and the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth versus Judas Iscariot", figures ranging from Pontius Pilate to Sigmund Freud are called to testify.Guirgis’ distinct and utterly contemporary voice uses the violent, chaotic energy of modern America, and particularly of New York, to explore timeless questions of free will and responsibility, of faith and fate.One last connection here is that the original version of Last Days was shown at New York’s Public Theatre in 2005, and was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman, of course, had previously featured in Along Came Polly as an actor who is playing the roles of both Jesus and Judas in an am-dram version of Jesus Christ Superstar.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyQ_ZmhBmMsqAsw7jQvA44kEGq30ICKcoSXcp9npjwv3RMLMt1sbm5gT77sAcjBG9tnQ84f_KyF21zUJydUgxeB0Y7ULFzfe3iXSWBmzlW-nistVpSdyJhbWrMUzqKgw1cGFMkX4Z5UoGO/s320/2008+Last+Days+of+Judas+Iscariot.jpg&imgrefurl=http://biblefilms.blogspot.com/2008/02/from-jesus-to-judas-mawle-given-lead-in.html&h=175&w=273&sz=15&hl=en&start=9&tbnid=fU6ISBY1F6v1mM:&tbnh=72&tbnw=113&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlast%2Bdays%2Bof%2Bjudas%2Biscariot%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG


Review # 6
Posted: Mon., Jul. 30, 2007, 1:55pm PTS
July- Aug 2007

Sets, Denny Dugally; costumes, E. B. Brooks; lighting, Mike Durst; sound, Joel Spence; production stage manager,
Tabatha Roy. Opened, reviewed July 28, 2007; runs through Aug. 26. Running time: 3 HOURS.

Director Matt Shakman
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

The setting is a courtroom in Purgatory, and the guilt or innocence of Judas (Daniel Jay Shore) is on the docket. Egyptian
lawyer El-Fayoumy (Jay Harik), up from Hell for the job, represents the prosecution, and the tenacious Cunningham
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot - Review Print - Variety.com http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=print_review&reviewid=...
2 of 2 7/30/07 2:26 PM
(Susan Pourfar) stands for the defense in a case the court doesn't particularly want to hear. Various people are called to
testify, from notables such as Mother Theresa (Deborah Puette) and Sigmund Freud (Rick D. Wasserman), direct witnesses
including Saint Peter (Marco Greco) and Pontius Pilate (Terrell Tilford), to Satan (David Clennon), who is conjured up to
confess to any influence he might have had. Meanwhile Judas sits catatonic in a room in the ninth circle of Hell,
uncommunicative since his death, attended only by Jesus (Joshua Wolf Coleman).
Shore makes for a sympathetic Judas, presenting a miserable intensity underlaid with a core of strength in the role. It's
difficult to not play Jesus as a stereotypical icon, but Coleman manages to demonstrate human dimension and frustrated
compassion in the part. Shore and Coleman's scene together, the heart of the play, feels like the playwright authentically
struggling with his own beliefs, and the result, as performed by these two fine actors, is simultaneously angry, fragile, and
quite moving. Clennon, resplendent in a fur-lined jacket, crimson silk shirt and leather pants, steals the show as Satan.
He's genially amusing as the seemingly casual Prince of Lies, who nonetheless, in a fit of pique, demolishes both lawyers
by revealing all the dark secrets of their lives.
Harik is delightfully energetic as the flattering El-Fayoumy, and Pourfar is solid as Cunningham, a lawyer who is not out
of her depth at all. Greco delivers a brash New York take on Simon the Zealot and Saint Peter, and Wasserman is excellent
as the self-satisfied Freud. Robert Machray's Caiaphas, arrogantly motioning the prosecuting attorney to object, benefits
mightily from the actor's superb voice, and Tilford's Pilate is one cool customer, turning the tables on Cunningham with
righteous anger. Chane't Johnson is a bright spot as the brassy but compassionate Saint Monica, and Puette is humorously
immovable as Mother Theresa. Finally, Rob Nagle's closing monologue as Butch Honeywell, a simply affecting
declaration of loss, is a subtle and powerful piece of acting.
Director Matt Shakman gets the best from his cast, and uses the church as a setting very well, staging scenes everywhere
from the front and center of the room to the organist's balcony. E.B. Brooks' costumes add flair to the show, and Mike
Durst's lighting--a challenge in this traditionally nontheatrical space -- is professional and evocative. Those who are easily
offended should know that there is a good deal of profanity in this show. Although it is at first a bit disconcerting to hear
"motherfucker" inside a church, this production mixes the sacred and the profane with estimable grace.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.robnagle.com/Judas-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.robnagle.com/judas.html&h=524&w=818&sz=38&hl=en&start=15&um=1&tbnid=y0b-XeZzVKOGyM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=144&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlast%2Bdays%2Bof%2Bjudas%2Biscariot%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7GGLD%26sa%3DN