Who was Jesus? What was he like? Why did he provoke such startling reactions in those around him? These are big questions, and there are no short, easily packageable answers.
Matthew Hurt’s new play seeks enlightenment not by looking directly at “The Man Jesus” himself (he isn’t personally represented), but by speculating about the effect he had on other people, during the three short years of his active ministry.
All the parts are played by a single actor, Simon Callow, returning to the city where he was once a student and first stepped on a stage in earnest.
Callow’s is a tour de force of character acting, ninety minutes of virtuosic switching from one persona to another, altering accent, age and gender in the flick of a footlight, and patiently filling out a moving portrait of a remarkable individual whose influence still shapes human history.
There are many revelatory moments, as Hurt re-imagines in contemporary terminology the impact Jesus’s words and deeds may possibly have had on those around him.
A disciple speaks about “the eyes” and their mesmerising, visionary quality; the three-time betrayal of Peter is re-told with horrifying plausibility; Pilate is depicted as almost comically powerless to influence the crowd clamouring for crucifixion. Hurt’s imaginative engagement with these crucial events and incidents provides haunting insights. A strong sense of the inevitable pervades his cumulative portrayal of Jesus as revolutionary outsider, totally unwilling to compromise his vision of how a world gone wrong might still be made to go right again.
Callow’s pacing of the multi-faceted narrative has an assurance born of long experience depicting historically important characters (Dickens, Wilde and Shakespeare have all previously been given the Callow treatment), and his story-telling is done with the absorbing touch of a theatrical master.
The Man Jesus, Lyric Theatre, Belfast
Terry Blain
