Preview
BIGGER THAN JESUS
Necessary Angel and WYRD Productions
Starring Rick Miller
Written by Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks
Directed by Daniel Brooks
Runs until March 6
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
It’s easy to peg Rick Miller’s hit play Bigger Than Jesus as the work of a lapsed Catholic. As a churchgoing child in Montreal, Miller grew up with the image of Jesus as gentle teacher and willing martyr – the sacrificial Lamb of God who died on the Cross for our sins – and it colours the actor-playwright’s serio-comic reinterpretation of Christ.
But the show has also been informed by another, less comforting viewpoint.
Miller’s co-writer and director is Daniel Brooks, a Jew for whom Christ, the crucifix and the Gospels have, in his words, "a deeply different resonance."
"The world mythology that I grew up with had to do with holocausts and purges and inquisitions, a litany of one disaster after another at the hands of various cultures, one of those being the Christian culture," says Brooks.
"The Cross always had a slightly frightening aspect to me – I was always a little afraid of it because I was never sure if there was an enemy behind the Cross. I was raised with a certain fear of anti-Semitism. I went to an Anglican school and I got a lot of anti-Semitic comments, and my favourite response was always, ‘Well, you know Christ was a Jew.’ Which is part of the point of view of our play."
A box-office smash at last year’s High Performance Rodeo, Miller and Brooks’s witty but ultimately sincere meditation on the historical Jesus and the Christian religion is back at One Yellow Rabbit for a two-week encore – a Second Coming, if you like. The solo show stars Miller, the creator of that popular Shakespeare-meets-The Simpsons spoof MacHomer, who gives a funny, pop-culture spin to the Jesus myth – comparing the four Gospels to the four Beatles, performing a Last Supper puppet show with plastic figurines – while at the same time confronting the allure and mystery at the core of Christianity.
The multimedia production is structured to imitate the stages of the Catholic Mass, which is also Brooks’s contribution.
"I’m fascinated by the rituals of religion," he says. "I’ve had a lot of Catholic friends over the years – Daniel MacIvor, one of my closest friends and collaborators, is Catholic – and I’ve gone to many a Catholic Mass. But I’m also, for lack of a better term, an atheist, and I’ve always found the literal readings of any liturgical text to be deeply problematic. At the same time, I have a tremendous amount of delight in the mysteries of life and engagement with the unknown. That’s where I come in (with this show). I’ve always been interested in taking sacred texts and bringing them into the theatre, which to me is a religious place."
Bigger Than Jesus is the first collaboration between Brooks, one of Canada’s top directors, and Miller, who until the runaway success of MacHomer was known mainly as a jobbing actor. The two first met while appearing in Robert Lepage’s film of the John Mighton play Possible Worlds – a movie inspired by Brooks’s stage production. (Incidentally, Brooks is doing this interview via cell phone from Toronto, as he trudges home from rehearsals for Mighton’s latest work, Half Life, which opens there on March 1.)
Brooks says Miller approached him about collaborating on Bigger Than Jesus, which at that point consisted mainly of the cheeky, John Lennon-inspired title and a general theme about the identity of Jesus. "I think he was quite conscious of wanting a perspective that was different," says Brooks. "We had a discussion and I saw some possibility in what he was talking about and I told him what I was interested in, and so we set the terms of how we would go at it and started working. It’s been a good marriage."
And a successful one. As well as selling out at the Rodeo, the show also scored a hit at Toronto’s Factory Theatre, where it played to rave reviews earlier this season. Following the current Calgary run, it will head over to Germany for engagements in Munich, Stuttgart and Berlin.
If Lennon’s notorious quip had humorless fundamentalists tossing Beatles records on the bonfire, this play has yet to seriously provoke their wrath.
"We’ve had a handful of angry responses to the image we use in our advertising," says Brooks. "Rick is very interested in responding to the odd angry e-mail, but there haven’t been too many. I think if you actually come and see this show, there’s a mixture of reverence and irreverence and I don’t think it’s dismissive at all of the sacredness of the Catholic Mass.
"Certainly, front and centre, the show insists that a literal reading of the Gospels is not only foolish but potentially dangerous," he adds. "But I think there’s enough respect and engagement with questions of truth that people who see the show will find it very hard to go away angry." |
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