PARALLELS OF PAIN
Director’s fresh take on Judas explores how the persecution of Jews is similar within the Black community,
Judas Noir
(out of 4) Adapted by Leighton Alexander Williams from the play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Williams. Until Oct. 20 at Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Ave. crowstheatre.com or 647-341-7390
Before I get to my evaluation of this enterprising production, bear with me for some back story.
This is a new play, except kind of not. Director/writer/performer Leighton Alexander Williams adapted it from the script The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by the American playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, which premiered in 2005 in New York City. Guirgis’s play is an irreverent, foul-mouthed and passionate imagining of a trial of the man who betrayed Jesus Christ, set in a purgatory that looks and sounds a lot like contemporary Manhattan.
Williams was interested in using the play to explore parallels between the historical persecution of the Jews and the situation of contemporary African-Americans, and tweeted Guirgis proposing a production in this vein. Guirgis encouraged him to go further: to write an adaptation of the play drawing on his own experience.
Judas Noir is made up of about 60 per cent of Guirgis’s material and 40 per cent of Williams’ own. BDB (Big Dreamers Brotherhood) Productions, a collective of seven Black artists including Williams, first produced Judas Noir last year at the Tarragon Theatre Extraspace. It’s now being presented as part of Obsidian Theatre’s new Darktown initiative at Streetcar Crowsnest.
The vivacity coming off that stage feels like something new and exciting for Toronto theatre. It’s still unusual to see an all-Black cast of 10 in one of the city’s mainstream funded venues, and Williams’ production delivers fabulous theatricality on what is surely not an enormous budget. Not all of the performers are at the same level and, like Guirgis’s original, the play peters out rather than end in a satisfying and conclusive way.
But there is indeed something productive and provocative about imagining Judas’s betrayal of Jesus and its consequences in the context of contemporary communities of colour. Arguments made on the stand by psychiatrist Soroya French (Alicia Richardson) — that Judas may have had mental illness stemming from generations of abuse, and that his community failed to acknowledge this out of ignorance and blindness — land particularly powerfully.
This makes the play sound serious, but Williams effectively channels Guirgis in layering some of the heaviest possible themes with impudent humour, delivered in hyper-contemporary urban argot. This is pushed furthest in Chelsea Russell’s Saint Monica, serving up pure cheek in a Jamaican patois, the exact meaning of which was at times hard for my white self to make out, though the gist was always clear (and Russell looks fabulous in a gold spangled pantsuit designed by Julia Kim).
The standout performance is Williams himself as Satan: a tall man with an impressive wingspan, he captures the character’s combination of allure and menace. Adrian Walters and Derick Agyemang as Jesus and Judas are clear and empathetic, while Andrea Carter and Ryan Rosery spar entertainingly as the defence and prosecution attorneys.
Williams and Kim (who designs sets and props as well as costumes) arrange the physical environment well to sim- ulate the shape of a courtroom: two banks of seating facing each other, with the judge’s bench on one side and Agyemang’s Judas sitting opposite for nearly all the playing time as silent witness.
Some passages without speech, such as a foot-washing scene, drag. But so much is forgiven in an insanely entertaining dance sequence set in Club Bathsheba, in which the entire company shows off great moves (choreographed by Christopher Clarke) in a sexy environment of fog and strobe lighting (designed by Logan Cracknell), to music by P-Square, Rihanna, Drake and others.
Go for the ambition. Stay for the topicality and laughs. And leave excited about the future of diverse theatre in Toronto.