"The moment you enter the theatre auditorium you are presented with the essence of the play in a single image - a backdrop that's equal parts PlaySkool and late Gothic landscape - a naively rendered hotch-potch of trees, animals, hill-top towns and a rainbow, lacking any sense of perspective or structure, but eye-catching, charming and emotionally uplifting. Just as in the late Gothic religious paintings of Giotto or Fra Angelico, where characters from different eras and lands are depicted co-existing in a Twilight Zone space where St Peter & St Francis of Assisi kneel before the baby Jesus, in the weird world of 'Christ Almighty' there are constant references to characters from the Old & New Testament, Homer, and ancient Greek & Roman mythology and history, delivered in a Kath & Kim-style dead-pan manner, as if they were friends & neighbours. Much of the script's comedy consists of this disconcerting juxtaposition of suburban Aussie tradie-speak, Inner West pseudo-spiritual cliche, and a roll-call of every ancient character from Achilles to Zeus, plus a whole heap of clever, catchy songs.
The reliance on the sudden and bizarre shifts in tone and action to elicit laughter is both a strength and a weakness - funny if you know who is being referred to, but not if you don't, and a fair few cultural allusions are quite obscure, e.g. the Myrmidons - Achilles personal storm-troopers. On the night I attended, opening night, the laughs were only intermittent, but this probably had more to do with timing and energy. As we all know, a good joke depends on perfect timing to get a great reaction. On this night, the production was still finding its rhythm (no pun intended), but as the evening progressed the energy lifted and the actors began to relax into their roles.
The cast is uniformly excellent, with some top-notch singers amongst them, while the dance routines are workmanlike, but this is really a play with music more than a musical, strictly speaking. The songs are fun and hummable, spanning a broad range of styles, from hip-hop, introspective ballad, to country & beyond. James Hartley's hip-hop Herod was deservedly well received - a real crowd-pleaser. Credit for the music goes to Jeremy Kindl & Gianna Cheung, with lyrics by Tommy James Green.
The story of Jesus Christ is quite well-known, so staging a show about the kid from Nazareth will undoubtedly invite comparisons with Monty Python's "The Life of Brian", "Jesus Christ Superstar", and a swag of movies, from Pasolini & Scorcese to Mel Gibson & the big bopper of religious flicks - Cecil B. de Mille. There is a moment in the first half of the show, when Jesus (a charming performance by Giuseppe Rotondella) is singing/preaching to the mob/audience, turns to Peter (a.k.a. St Peter), his manager/spin doctor, a la Col. Tom Parker, and asks, "What is my point?" Good question, I thought. For, despite the colour & movement, the gags and the songs, I was beginning to wonder, "Do we really need another outing of this well-worn narrative?" But perhaps that is the point. Just as we keep restaging Hamlet, and re-interpreting Homer's "Odyssey", there are some stories that are fundamental to our culture, that we feel compelled to revisit and retell with a slightly different emphasis every decade or so. The message of Green's musical comedy is a simple one, as was Jesus's. And just as in "The Life of Brian", he saves it for the final song - 'live your true life, and be kind to others', or as the Bard would have put it, 'This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.' Words to live by, whoever says them.
Christ Almighty: A Comedy of Biblical Proportions .... 3.5 stars
Playing at the Flightpath Theatre Marrickville, June 5th - 21st
Reviewed by: Garreth Cruikshank