Passion Play at BSU

Or: Splinters from the Cross

Three different worlds, three villainies remarkably the same. Elizabethan England, somewhere by the sea, Nazi Germany in the shadow of the forests, and Mid to Late Twenty Century South Dakota, stuck on the plains. What have they got in common? The Passion. Each community in Sarah Ruhl’s three act, three age extravaganza on art and love has dedicated itself to telling the last days of Jesus of Nazareth. There’s generally some tension between two men who who play Pontius (Ethan Petzinger) and the Christ (Michael Montanus), some connection between the girls who play Mary the Virgin (Kameron Nichols) and Mary Magdalen (Rachel Fichtman). There’s a power, weird crazy girl getting underfoot (Alednard Huber) and a giant literal Head of State coming to visit (Ab Jungen, split between Carnival-Float Queen Elizabeth, Todler-Project Paper Mache Hitler, and Horror Movie Regan).

The play, directed by Gordon Reinhardt, leans heavily in the power of human community to create handcrafted miracles. Trains are raised by drum and shifted hands. Old conventions of giant disks of night and day planted mid-stage, standing clouds are employed to show the might of the wind in its passage. Scenery is shifted, Golgotha is raised, every shift is run through the cast in their linen pajamas. It’s a Brechtian take on Ruhly whimsy: the miracles of the stage are nothin’ special, nothing to distract us for the “reality” of the lives of love or faith. But the majesty of the mystery of it, and the earnest but lightly sugared language Ruhl has made her own is still tastable.

The LGBT elements shine, the tenderness snatched between same sex couples in times and places dangerous to their hearts, put forward with a gentle touch or letting slip of disguise (though, in the immortal words of Thomas Sanders,“Could be Gayer.”) Petzinger and Montanus are particularly fine in their German iterations: a foot solider and the son of the tradition Christos actor trying out the part for the first time. Montanous is a generous performer, taking the time to address the audience in its multitude of eyes, drawing deep from the well of himself, for the suffering, the passion, required of him. His recurring character, uncomfortable in his own skin, seizes a hold of him, first trembling with zeal, then shivering with fear (and sly-eyed with desire) and finally, an easy American boy, shucksing about. Petzinger carries an unwavering note, speaking from his belly, making mischievous pronouncements with a powerful voice, his true power coming in his unbending, in moments of gentility when he too looks into the audience, looking for what is real.

There are fine moments, as when Violet, beginning to cotton on to her reincarnation, appears outside herself speaking the voice of an invisible child, handled and coddled by her parents, but relegated to the sidelines. But the treasure of echoes, of fine lines, or irony and revelation too often sift through our fingers as the play makes haste to count all of its wealth. Passion Play (like ancient turns it wides around) takes a long time to get through, and in the rush for our convince we get to see the moments, but not live in them. The show is rough, and splintery, unfinished and tying itself in strange directions: the devision of the role of the Director for example, (Lauren Rausch and Ryan Singh, though that has its pay offs), or Elizabeth and Hitler on an awkward American road trip). In a play whose questions lay hands on the devision between life and art, grim reality and glorious illusion, we get too much of the former to press to the light of the latter.