Kristen Bush in Passion Play. Photo by Brian WarlingPlaywright: Sarah Ruhl. At: Goodman Theatre. Phone: 312-443-3800; $20-$70. Runs through: Oct. 21
Religion and politics have been one and the same until relatively recently. Governments supported a state-sanctioned faith or were out-and-out theocracies. Today's global resurgence of theocratic politics is the greatest extant threat to democratic pluralism and individual liberty.
Shining young playwright Sarah Ruhl, a MacArthur 'Genius Grant' recipient, tackles religion and politics head-on in her sprawling Passion Play, but she personalizes her tale, so it's about individual faith more than formal religion. She eschews obvious preaching or debate, yet there's a party line espoused in each of the play's three parts, respectively set in 1575 England, 1934 Germany and 1969 South Dakota. In each, a historic political leader appears, God-like, to lay down political articles of faith.
In late medieval Europe, the life of Jesus—Annunciation to Ascension—was dramatized in so-called passion plays that became massive pageants involving most of a town's citizenry and craft guilds under Catholic Church direction. Later, these epic shows became secularized, and continue today ( even in the United States ) often as summertime, outdoor spectaculars. Ruhl uses productions of the passion play to comment on the intersection of faith, politics and sexuality in three different eras. What if Pontius Pilate marries the Virgin Mary ( that is, the actors playing them ) ? What if Jesus has a Nazi boyfriend? What if Mary Magdalene really is a prostitute?
Passion Play is ambitious and complex, and director Mark Wing-Davey has used Ruhl's long-but-barebones text to create a modern theatrical pageant, layered with visual effects and technical devices—some as old as passion plays themselves—and a cast of 16. It's dazzling and impressive, but it doesn't all work because the three-and-half hour show ( two intermissions ) doesn't have a gut-wrenching emotional climax.
It appears Ruhl has taken on more than she can effectively sustain. The third part especially, set in South Dakota during/after Vietnam, is too long and the least effective. The God-like spokesman, Ronald Reagan, is too much present and too clownish vs. the earlier appearances of Hitler and Elizabeth I. Ruhl's time-leaping, history-inspired work compares well to some Tom Stoppard plays, but Ruhl doesn't yet have Stoppard's intellectual and theatrical mastery.
Wing-Davey compensates by making each successive part more elaborate than the one before, adding quasi-magical flourishes—model ships, giant fish, striking projections—not required by the script. Eventually the size of his production consumes the play, which isn't of sufficient dramatic weight to hold it all up. Wing-Davey is brilliant at bringing out unexpected comedy, especially in Part One and in Ruhl's affectionate jests at theater itself, but he sacrifices character depth in the process.
The large canvas Ruhl attempts to paint may be too vast for complete success, but her effort is worthy, intriguing, entertaining and admirable nonetheless. Artists always should think Big.
