One of the theatrical trends of the moment seems, somewhat unexpectedly, to be monologues about Jesus Christ. After Fiona Shaw’s glorious performance at the Barbican in Colm Tóibín’s adaptation of his novella The Testament of Mary, in which Christ’s mother struggled to explain and accept the fate of her son, Simon Callow is performing in The Man Jesus this autumn. The single-actor script by young dramatist Matthew Hurt kicked off its 46-date UK tour at the Lyric Theatre Belfast.What the two works have in common is that the protagonist, like Beckett’s Godot, never appears on stage: Jesus turns up only in fragments of dialogue or description recalled by others. This is dramatically sensible – neither Callow nor Shaw really has the body shape to be
09 October 2014, The Tablet
A name that is spoken
The Man Jesus, Lyric Shaftesbury Avenue, London, and UK tour
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