"The Last Days of Judas Iscariot"

Today I went with some friends to see the play "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" presented at the Corpus Christi Texas A & M University Theater. It was a birthday celebration for a friend. I am grateful I was invited or I would never have seen this play.

It is extremely long (2 1/2 hours) and very interesting, with a lot of foul language. Besides the latter, there was obviously much background knowledge of Judaism, saints, Roman Catholicism, and the Roman Empire. It started with a soliloquy by Judas' mother, remembering when he was born and how she loved him. That brought a whole new outlook to start off with, as I had never considered how Judas' family felt about him.

It is a courtroom drama set in Purgatory where the case is argued whether Judas can be released from Hell.

This is what Curtain Up said about the NY production:

"While Stephen Adly Guirgis' dialogue is often poetic, it is a poetry couched in contemporary hip-hop street talk, spiced with the flavor of the barrio and with the the deeper thematic concerns often presented as laughter-inducing monologues -- for example, the first and funniest testimony from Saint Monica, " heaven's nag " with a decidedly hip and down-to-earth vocabulary. She relates how she descended from her saintly perch to "check out " Judas for herself and, after convincing herself of his remorse, "went back home and got on the horn with God."

So that gives you just a taste of the language used and the different characters, such as Sigmund Freud and Pontius Pilate, called to the witness stand.

I'm still thinking about this and wish I could see it again. Perhaps I'll have to read the play.

After looking at various sites where this play was produced, I can see that I was shaped by seeing it here. This is a video made about the play I saw today, though you'll only see the various characters and probably won't be able to tell who is whom.