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The only person who seems to have faith in Judas’ absolution is Fabiana Aziza Cunningham, an Irish/Romani lawyer with a troubled past and an adamantine resolve in defending the seemingly-undefendable. To us, and the characters of the play, Judas’ fate has been sealed at a global scale for two thousand years. The sheer scale of Judas’ infamy seems to preclude any notions of repentance or redemption his treachery leaves Brutus and Benedict Arnold in the dust, his very name a synonym for back-stabbers and turncoats. It’s practically impossible to read this play without some foreknowledge of Judas, and that’s what Guirgis relies on. What we learn about him is gleaned mostly through the lens of varyingly-prejudiced witnesses, and our own biases and assumptions. It isn’t until the penultimate scene of the play that we finally get a glimpse of Judas’ thoughts and motivations from the man himself. He is afforded no opportunity to testify at his own trial, though that is largely because he has been locked in a sort of fugue state for two thousand years. And yet, Judas is a passive bit-player in his own story – he is less a character than a symbol a case study for the realities of redemption. Guirgis has long proven himself the scribe of society’s pariahs – and taking on the ultimate poster boy for betrayal is well within his worldly wheelhouse.
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*Spoilers, intense themes and some cursing from this point on* From Phoenix Theatre’s 2014 production It’s only about a hundred pages long, and though its content is dense, its pace is swift, and the questions it encourages you to ponder will keep you occupied long after the final line, and I’d recommend it to everyone. Intense, provocative, insightful, the play wants you to actively engage with your own problems and your beliefs. Anyone who enjoys the irreverent existentialism of Birdman, Groundhog Day and Harold and Maude, or tv’s recent obsession with the afterlife ( The Good Place, Miracle Workers, Forever, Good Omens), this is the play for you. It’s A Matter of Life and Death meets The Greatest Story Ever Told but scripted like a Scorsese movie. The language of the angels is rendered colloquial and relatable, humanising and grounding these distant and divine beings. Don’t be put off by the theologically-incendiary title Christianity may provide the characters, but religion is the context, not the substance: Last Days is a moving meditation on guilt, remorse and responsibility on a cosmic yet deeply personal scale.
Saint monica last days of judas iscariot monologue trial#
But the trial goes ahead regardless a churlish judge, a sleazy prosecutor and a fiercely intelligent defence attorney wrangle with each other over holy scripture as a star-studded slew of iconic figures parade in and out of the witness stand, and God is conspicuous only by His absence.Īlthough the play can get as intense and emotional as that synopsis suggests, it’s crafted with a lightness of touch that makes celestials and saints (and even Satan) feel distinctly modern and familiar despite their otherwise-distancing epochal grandiosity. The verdict is almost universally considered a foregone conclusion to even think of re-evaluating the complicity of Judas in Jesus’ death seems like a betrayal of God and everything His disciples hold dear. The trial concerns the immortal soul of Christianity’s – perhaps history’s – most infamous traitor: Judas Iscariot. The story: in a rundown corner of Purgatory (ironically) called Hope, a court is in session. The original, premiering in 2005, was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and starred Sam Rockwell as Judas. One of the reasons for that is because it called to mind another Guirgis-penned, provocatively-titled, masterpiece: The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, a triumph of the form and one of my all-time favourite works of fiction. It was a vicious, vibrant play that struck me deeply both on the page and the stage, and it has stayed with me ever since.
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Last year I had the pleasure of speaking on the post-show panel for the Sherman Theatre’s production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Motherf**ker with the Hat.