![]() ![]() Mark Lockyer as the Egyptian prosecutor is all flighty jokiness while Susan Lynch endows his opponent with a mixture of fury and despair. Anthony Ward's design surrounds the action with a circular screen full of technicolour urban images. These are matters rarely debated on the London stage and Goold's production gives full weight to Guirgis's rich text. Guirgis is making a serious point: that, if betrayal is the ultimate sin, then forgiveness is the ultimate sign of grace. Simon the Zealot, for instance, recalls that, after the riot at the Temple, Jesus was "like I'm going to die soon so let's just chill". What gives the play its life is that Guirgis handles big issues with comic flair. On the one hand, we are told that Judas, played by Joseph Mawles, was Jesus's alter ego and an instrument of his divine mission: on the other that Judas was an impossibly arrogant figure who made God in his own image. God's perfect love is pitted against His rightful justice: the spirit of the New Testament against the Old. ![]() Judas's counsel gets to the nub of the matter when she quotes the Hegelian notion that within every idea is contained its contradiction and what follows is an often hilarious batting forth of thesis and antithesis. ![]()
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