Review: SCT's Uneven LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT Has Moments but Not Enough

It's tough when you see a play that has some really amazing moments but also sits there and screams, "My God I need an editor!" Such is the case with Stephen Adly Gurgis' "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" currently performing at the Center Theatre from Sound Theatre Company. Not only could Gurgis do with trimming down this piece that tends to ramble but the folks at SCT could do with tightening their performances as well. But we'll get to that in a minute.

The play itself takes a off kilter look at the gospel as we find ourselves in a trial just outside of purgatory where Judas Iscariot (Jose Abaoag) is on appeal to determine whether he can go up to heaven or if he must return to hell. And so we hear testimony from various apostles, saints and even Satan himself on what really went on the day Judas turned over Jesus for those 30 pieces of silver. That's the general gist of the show and all you really need to know except that for some reason they feel it's OK to tell this story for 3 hours and 20 minutes.

Gurgis insists in the piece on bringing in every possible figure from the gospel to turn their piece of the tale on its head. It's a very clever and often times funny device but he does it with EVERY story so many of which just feel extraneous. On top of that every scene repeats its message ad nauseam making the scenes far too verbose and long winded. So while I applaud his take on these stories and appreciate his writing, at the same time I feel insulted by his insistence that we're too dumb to understand his message the first two times he says something. And then there's the old theater rule that if you end a show strongly you can be forgiven for much of what came before. Unfortunately the show ends with an overly lengthy monologue which lent nothing to the piece.

This leads me to the performances and pace which were all over the place and added to the already long evening. One of the best notes I ever received from a director was that as an actor you have to earn your pauses. Conversation, especially in a play, needs to clip along and get that message out lest the audience become bored and so if you're going to pause during a speech it had better be worth it. Unfortunately far too few of the actors in this production subscribe to that ideal as their monologues would drone on with pause after pause for emphasis, or searching for the next line, or something. But whatever it was it did nothing but add stage time for them and frustration for the audience. I found with certain actors I could repeatedly count to 3 in my head during quiet moments of their speeches after every few words and no speech is that important to warrant that much pausing. Director Teresa Thuman and her team could have probably taken about a half an hour out of the piece by simply taking much of the air out of the speeches and it would have resulted in a much tighter and more powerful show.

There were, of course, some exceptions of actors who turned in some truly amazing performances. Performances that stopped the show (in a good way). Shermona Mitchell as Saint Monica blows in like a delicious hurricane, drops some amazing knowledge on us and blows out just as quick to wonderfully devastating effect. Similarly Ray Tagavilla delivers a stunningly creepy performance as Satan with not one ounce of wasted moments. To be honest I longed for a play of the two of them. "Conversations Between Satan and the Saint". I think it could be a big hit. The courtroom staff of Keith Dahlgren as the judge, Caitlin Frances as the defense and Yusef Mahmoud as the prosecutor too brought some wonderful things to the piece and kept their courtroom buzzing and hilarious. And I must also mention Erwin Galan who managed some beautiful moments in three very different scenes.

But as good as those moments were they still didn't make up for the long windedness of the rest of the show. And so with my three letter rating system I give Sound Theatre Company's "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" an exhausted MEH+. Some really great performances surrounded by a lot of ... pausing.

"The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" from Sound Theatre Company performs at the Center Theatre through July 31st. For tickets or information visit them online at www.soundstheatrecompany.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.