After working almost nonstop for the past month, including most weekends, I needed some decompression time last weekend. Many people would have decompressed by reading a book by the pool, or by cycling along the lakeshore bike path for many hours, or even by walking around in a cocktail-induced haze during last weekend’s Gay Pride festivities. Since I’m battier than a New Mexico rock cave, my formula for stress relief, however, involved seeing Steven Adly Gurgis’s long (two and a half hours) metaphysical discourse on the nature of guilt and forgiveness, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, being given an energetic production by the Gift Theater, and attending the Luchino Visconti retrospective at the Siskel Film Center for the long (two and a half hours too!), over-the-top, insanely mesmerizing Visconti masterpiece, The Damned. Paraphrasing the even battier Col. Kilgore of Apocalypse Now, (sigh deeply) I love the smell of extremely provocative art in the morning!
Philip Seymour Hoffmann and his Labyrinth Theater Group in New York mounted the first production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot a couple of years ago to generally positive reviews. It has an intriguing conceit - an idealistic and agnostic lawyer in Purgatory takes on the almost impossible task of appealing Judas Iscariot’s case to a tribunal (although I never really fully understood what it represented, since the Judge isn’t a stand-in for God at all) in order to reverse the extreme and eternal punishment (exile to the ninth circle of hell and permanent catatonia) he received for betraying Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of silver. Throughout the course of the really long trial, the stern Judge, the defense lawyer, the preening, sycophantic drama king of a prosecutor, and a parade of witnesses and bystanders- a deaf Mother Teresa, a pompous Sigmund Freud, an elitist, golf-playing Pontius Pilate, a hilariously foul-mouthed Saint Monica portrayed as a cross between comic Rosie Perez and sultry J Lo, Satan himself wearing red checkered hot pants- debate, discuss, and illuminate the nature of guilt and remorse, the contradictions in Roman Catholic theology, the political landscape of Roman-occupied Judea, the motivations for selling out and betraying a close friend, etc. etc. Whew! The play is intellectually impressive but also emotionally engaging, and really really funny. It is also pretty long, and after a while, the whole Law and Order trial format becomes a little wearying. I also don’t buy the last speech that the trial foreman, Butch Honeywell, gives about cheating on his wife and the complicated feelings that came after. But I have to give it to Gurgis though- Last Days is ambitious and spectacularly brazen. And Kevin Christopher Fox gives the Gift production the right snappy pace to minimize the drift-off-and-think-about-your-laundry-moments for the audience, a risk that long, cerebral plays take.
The acting is just superb- the 15 person ensemble is strongly cohesive, consistently excellent, and always watchable. The standouts for me are Benjamin Montague, who consistently gets the biggest laughs as the hyperactive, sleazy, amoral prosecutor Al Fayoumy (often derogatorily referred to by the Judge as Al Fajita); Lisa Fernandez as the profanity-spewing, tough-as-nails Saint Monica, who underneath it all conceals the biggest, most humane, most tender maternal heart of them all; and Gift Artistic Director Michael Patrick Thornton (who impressed me so much last year in the Steppenwolf production of The Elephant Man) as a very human, very torn-up Judas Iscariot. I especially liked the fact that Thornton provides the refreshingly calm and sublime counterpoint to most of the performances - Gurgis’s writing is larger-than-life and actor-showcase-oriented, so most of the ensemble performs big and broad (as required by the play). The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a terrific option if you don’t want another lazy summer night of doing nothing.
There is nothing calm or sublime in Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, which famed film critic Pauline Kael described as “hysterical” when it first came out. Hysterical is indeed among some of the apt descriptors for this soap opera on uncontrolled steroids (”unbelievably hypnotic campy train wreck” is another), about a German industrialist family who makes a Faustian bargain with the Nazis to protect their wealth and influence. I think there are two points that Visconti is making with his surprisingly Academy Award-nominated screenplay: that there are people who are intrinsically morally corrupt, and that lack of morals will do these people in at the end. These simple themes are brought to life in an overwrought, over-the-top, strange, wackily demented Nazi Germany milieu - I think the whole directorial vision is more fascinating than the script. And my gosh, for a movie made in 1969, it still comes across as stronger stuff than many of today’s films. It has a virtual catalogue of shock: hetero cross-dressing (Helmut Berger as Marlene Dietrich is one of those hundred things you need to see before you die); murder; pedophilia (creepily portrayed); incest (also creepily portrayed); a homosexual orgy among Nazi officers and soldiers who eventually all get massacred. Oh, and also an extended Bavarian sing-along scene with the same Nazis (I was expecting Liza Minnelli to come out with a karaoke mike, bowler hat and black fishnets…oops, wrong film, this is not Cabaret!). Add to that lots of screaming and eyeball-rolling; Ingrid Thulin redefining fabulousness with her icy demeanor, silk and feather outfits, ever-changing hairstyles, and lipstick in various shades of red; a pretty perplexing love scene in which Thulin is fully nude and Dick Bogarde is swathed in a robe; a Grand Guignol-like ending, and it’s quite a memorable Saturday night at the movies. I don’t really think that this is a Visconti masterpiece like some other people have made it out to be, but I think it is quite notable to see how a director with mojo can come up with a unique, enthralling cinematic world which bucks the conventions and expectations of his time.
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is on the Victory Gardens Greenhouse Mainstage, 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue until July 20. This production is a remount of the play which was first seen in the spring at the Gift Theater, 4802 N. Milwaukee Avenue. Get your tickets now! The Luchino Visconti Retrospective continues at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State Street, until July 26. The next overwrought Visconti epic I am breathlessly anticipating is the original version of The Leopard scheduled for July 12 and July 17.
Tags: Gift Theater, Siskel Film Center
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