Being human

Brown puts Passion in its Play

by Bill Rodriguez

PASSION PLAY. By Sarah Ruhl. Directed by John Emigh. With Gregory Howe, Cassandra Powers, Allison White, T.J. Morton, Rebecca Melsky. At Brown University Theatre through November 21.

There probably haven't been theatrical experiences more audience-involving than medieval Passion plays (not excluding the all-day play cycles of ancient Greece). What could be more intense to witness than the suffering of God? Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play, getting its world premiere at Brown University Theatre, engages our minds more than our emotions but seeks to strike us as profoundly when we look at actions behind religious pieties.

We get acquainted with two groups of townsfolk putting on Passion plays hundreds of years apart. The first is in England in 1575, the year that Queen Elizabeth banned them -- and all other religious plays, in an equal opportunity suppression. The second is the real payoff, the famous Passion play in Oberammergau, Bavaria, where the locals claim to have presented the event every 10 years since 1633. The time is 1934, the year after good Germans brought Hitler to power.

The play has more to do with the difficulty of being decently human than with any facile hypocrisies about particular Christians, easy targets well before the crusades, not to mention before the goose-stepping Gott mit uns crowd. (While we're on the topic: Shi'ite tradition came up with its own tearjerking Passion plays about the persecution of Mohammed's descendants. How's that for easy irony?)

Under examination here are the human heart and mind. There is much superficial sincerity, especially in the first act, which was produced at Trinity as part of the New Plays Festival two years ago. Two carpenters (Michael Keller and Mark Heyman) work on the play "for the glory of God." The simple young fisherman who portrays Christ (Gregory Howe) is a gentle sort, willing to marry the Virgin Mary (Allison White) when she gets pregnant. That Mary, along with the Mary Magdalene (Cassandra Powers), chat as frankly as the bawdy carpenters about the itches the lusty wenches are prone to scratch. Mary M.'s passions are more problematical, as she confesses to their priest (Kevin Landis) that she dreams "of kissing women full on the lips." Mary V.'s prospective swaddling clothes shopping is a dire prospect mostly because she will lose her part in the play, and the corresponding status the role brings her in the village.

Passion Play's satisfactions are mainly in its engaging flow and interesting interplays rather than its cautionary value or story. A playful fantasy exchange between a shepherd (Thomas Beatty) and shepherdess (Carmen Khelia Gill) -- she a cloud fairy in a prior life, he a star thrower -- could be too fey for words but it works nicely, giving playwright Ruhl ample wingspread for nimble lyrical flights. Smitten by Mary V., the smelly fishgutter Pontius (T.J. Morton), a sullen outcast, is fascinating to listen to, whether he is delivering a monologue of affliction or waxing sinister as he woos.

There is humor here, too, frequent and well woven in, with some tour de farce set pieces. A proto Flying by Foy rigger (Seth Bockley) delightfully bellows his pride at being able to make angels fly, while the angel/shepherdess desperately reminds herself that angels who like their job don't scream. The village idiot, sweetly rendered by Rebecca Melsky, is constantly charming and droll, keeping everything, if not everyone, honest.

Set in Germany, the second part could be awfully heavy-handed. It's not. The actors play characters that repeat or coincide with Act I, so development is swift. We get insights into how pious people, who consider themselves decent, could permit and even perpetrate evil. John/Jesus just wants to belong to something that's larger than himself, which describes both the Passion play and the German revitalization movement. The director (Gideon Jude Arthurs) speaks about how people in life off-stage sometimes need a director when things aren't clear.

The parallel that pays off the most is the village idiot becoming an orphan in this section. She is mistreated, alienated and, we eventually learn, Jewish. This culminating touch could so easily have been clumsy and obvious, but instead we get subtlety. In a "Would You Rather" game, the orphan asks the man who plays Jesus, now in Nazi uniform, things like would you rather make somebody deaf or be deaf yourself? The closing imagery is quite moving.

Passion Play doesn't cohere into a conventional narrative, although it attempts to. Its satisfactions instead are our following its process of trying to become a story, with the structures and closures that implies. For all its pleasures, its weaknesses range from tantalizing us with characters and relationships that go undeveloped, to events -- such as a suicide -- too significant to come out of the blue. It's also unclear whose play this is, as several characters seem to take command but then fade back. Passion Play is a montage of individually intriguing scenes, with too much packed in to adequately unfold. Perhaps if Oberammergau were the only setting, there would have been time and world enough.

It is, nevertheless, well worth seeing. A capable cast and John Emigh's sure-handed direction make it a somewhat satisfying theatrical ride, complete with graceful puppetry and apt live music, from dulcimer to accordion. Sarah Ruhl, who wrote this as an undergraduate, is now in the graduate playwriting program at Brown. It's good to know that we can count on seeing more from her fascinating imagination in the future.