This Jesus is quite ordinary

THEATRE

Jesus: No Ordinary Life

Written and directed by Damon Lockwood

2.5 stars

Blue Room Theatre

Review: David Zampatti

The release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian in 1979 drew howls of outrage and demonstrations outside cinemas from religious groups accusing it of blasphemy and worse.

I doubt that we’ll be seeing earnest people with crucifixes and placards picketing the Blue Room season of Damon Lockwood’s Jesus: No Ordinary Life (even though it’s much more scurrilous than Brian ever was).

Which is a pity, because it would be a diverting way to start a night at the theatre – and it means I’ll have to do the complaining for them.

It’s not that this Jesus offends my wafer-thin religious sensitivities; I just struggle to see what it achieves.

The stories, skits really, are clever enough, in a middlebrow sort of way: Lot brings his wife’s saline remains to a dinner party in a jar; Jesus’ biological father is more like a randy upstairs neighbour than, you know, God; an advertising agency comes up with a campaign for Christianity and holds auditions for the title role (guess who doesn’t get the gig); Lazarus rises and returns home to find things have changed in his enforced absence.

Meanwhile, Advertising Jesus (as nailed by Brendan Hanson) goes into rehab for 40 days at a clinic called The Desert, while Real Jesus (Shane Adamczak) waves his hands over various jugs of water with vinicultural results. You get the picture.

Lockwood and his cast (which includes Andrea Gibbs, Nick Pages-Oliver, Sean Walsh and Talei Howell-Price) are seasoned, talented improvisers, stars of the long-running Big HOO-HAA! and elsewhere, and Jesus: No Ordinary Life is played like improv. The actors leap from chairs side of stage for their scenes as if it’s their turn rather than their cue; the tricks of the trade – the waving hands to signal flashbacks, the comedy of repetition (though ox carts lack a little as a running gag) – are all there.

If we were at Lazy Susan’s on a Saturday night, and the performers were improvising scenes given them by the audience, we’d quite rightly be impressed by what they delivered.

But we’re not. While the show uses the forms and conventions of improvisation, it's all tightly scripted and rehearsed – improvisation with the benefit of hindsight, if you like.

There's nothing wrong with that in itself; many types of theatre, from Brechtian Theatre of Alienation to pantomime, use those understood forms and conventions to guide their audience's expectations and responses. Perhaps, like them, this faux improv might be an inspired approach.

But you can't have your cake and eat it. Jesus: No Ordinary Life is not off-the-cuff tomfoolery, and, to pull off this bait and switch, it needs to be much more insightful and funny than it is. Instead, it comes off as half-baked and a little lazy.

Towards the end, Lockwood has a character say: “Reviewers, make of this what you will.” That, I’m afraid, is leading with your chin.

Jesus: No Ordinary Life runs until July 4