The Devil’s Passion
Crypt on the Green, London

Admissions
Trafalgar Studios, London

As usual, many performances of Bach’s Passions were staged over Easter, and extracts from the St Matthew provide the soundtrack to the climax of the seasonally thematic solo show by writer-actor Justin Butcher that played in the crypt of St James Church, Clerkenwell, during Holy Week.

However, The Devil’s Passion, subtitled “Easter in Hell”, reverses the polarities of the story in a way that Bach could never have dared. Christ is the antagonist, and Satan the protagonist and narrator.
But there’s nothing irreverent about this. Butcher frames the story as a Middle Eastern thriller, in which Beelzebub is supervising an operation to capture Jesus before he can reveal the real meaning of his mission to the people. This emphasises Christ’s credentials as a “revolutionary leader”, a fairly familiar conceit of liberal theology, although Butcher introduces the chillingly original twist of the Devil bemoaning Christianity as a process of “radicalisation”, and Christ’s acceptance of his prophesied fate as a “suicide mission”.